- 



,0° 



1 



THE "TIMES" 



ON THE 



AMERICAN WAR 



A HISTORICAL STUDY. 



By t. 



LONDON : 

WILLIAM RIDGWAY, 169, PICCADILLY, W. 



MDCCCLXV. 



Price One Shilling and Sixpence. 



LONDON : 
PRINTED BY JAS. WADE, 
TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 



THE 



TIMES 



ON THE 



AMERICAN 



WAR. 



I. — The " Times " on American Affairs. 



In discussing the causes of the Crimean war, Mr. Kinglake gives 
a prominent place to the agency of the Times. He does not 
decide whether the Times was the master or the slave of the 
British people, whether it prompted their decisions, or merely 
divined them by a happy instinct. The coincidence of sentiment 
between the Times and common sentiment is explicable on either 
hypothesis. A story, however, is related by Mr. Kinglake, which, 
if it is to be accepted as authentic, would tend to clear up the 
mystery. The Times, he says, used to employ a shrewd, idle 
clergyman, whose duty was to hang about in places of public 
resort, to listen neither to the pre-eminently foolish nor to the 
pre-eminently wise, but to wait till some common and obvious 
thought was repeated in many places by many average men all 
unacquainted with each other. That thought was the prize he 
sought for, and brought home to his employers. Once in 
possession of this knowledge, they again employed able writers to 
enforce this opinion by arguments certain to fall upon willing 
ears. The Times was meanwhile regarded by ordinary men and 
women as a mysterious entity, a concrete embodiment of the 
power known in the abstract as " public opinion." As 
Mr. Kinglake says, men prefixed to its name such adjectives as 



4 The " Times" on the American War. 



showed " that they regarded the subject of their comments in the 
" light of an active sentient being, having a life beyond the span 
" of mortal men, gifted with reason, armed with a cruel strength, 
" endued with some of the darkest of human passions, but clearly 
" liable hereafter to the direst penalty of sin." They supposed it, 
I may add, to be in possession of a political knowledge pro- 
founder than the knowledge of any private individual, if not than 
the knowledge of statesmen, and acquiesced in its arrogating the 
right of speaking in the name of the English people. 

It is, however, notorious that no part of the power wielded by 
the Times is derived from any respect for its consistency or its 
unselfish advocacy of principles. And this follows naturally if we 
accept as substantially accurate the account given by Mr. Kinglake 
of the process by which its opinions are determined. A thought 
common to the great mass of the educated English classes must 
in all cases be a tolerably obvious one : if it refers to domestic 
matters which are familiar in all their bearings to the majority 
of educated men, it will probably be marked by shrewd common- 
sense ; when thousands of Englishmen agree in thinking that 
the suffrage is unfairly distributed, or that trade is oppressively 
taxed, they are probably right. Their opinions are, at least, 
the result of an operation which may, without a palpable 
misnomer, be described as thought. In such cases, the Times, 
in concentrating their opinions into one focus, will adopt a 
policy which, if not resting upon very exalted considerations, is 
at least dictated by homely good sense, and not marked by utter 
ignorance. But the case is widely different when we come to 
foreign politics. English ignorance in such matters is proverbial. 
The name of America five years ago called up to the ordinary 
English mind nothing but a vague cluster of associations, com- 
pounded of Mrs. Trollope, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Uncle 
Tom's Cabin. A few flying reminiscences of disputes about 
territory, and a few commonplaces about democracy, made up 



American Affairs. 



5 



what we were pleased to call our opinions. Most people were 
as ignorant of American history since the revolution as of the 
history of the Chinese empire, and of American geography as of 
the geography of Central Africa. Our utterances on American 
affairs might have the external form of judgment ; they were, in 
substance, mere random assertions about unknown quantities. 
Now, the Ti?nes, by the law of its being, would have to be the 
mere echo of these sham decisions. The honest British public 
confidently laid down the law, like a Dogberry giving judgment 
in a Chancery suit, and the Times stood by as a skilful reporter 
to dress its blundering dogmas in the language of political 
philosophy. The British public talked about " Yankee snobbish- 
ness ; " the Times translated its words into solemn nothings 
about " American democracy," and the public thought it had said 
rather a good thing. 

I wish to trace some of the consequences of this peculiar pro- 
cess, by which a newspaper transmutes our rubbish into a kind 
of Britannia metal, and obtains our sympathy because we have 
ourselves provided the raw material, and our admiration because 
it is worked up into such sparkling tinsel. The very first neces- 
sity for this dexterous shuffling is an affectation of absolute 
infallibility ; a true account of the Times would run like Prince 
Henry's description of Poins, " Thou art a blessed fellow to think 
" as every man thinks, never a man's thought in the world keeps 
" the roadway better than thine." But it would never suit our 
modern Poins to be praised for merely keeping the roadway ; he 
must be credited with also pointing it out ; and, to substantiate 
his claims of guiding the English people instead of merely divin- 
ing the path which they will take, he must naturally affect more 
than mortal wisdom. His claim to be followed is that he is 
always right. And the a posteriori proof that the Times has been 
right harmonizes beautifully with this d priori claim to confidence. 
Everybody, it says, agrees with us ; therefore we are right ; every- 



6 



The "Times" on the American War. 



body always has agreed with us, therefore we have been always right. 
The Ti??ies, like the figure-head of a ship, always leads public opinion; 
and, as we have always been following it, it must have been going 
in the same direction. The beauty of this is that the Times in 
arrogating infallibility and consistency contrives to insinuate delicate 
flattery to its constituents. No one can deny a claim to consistency 
founded upon perfect agreement with his own past opinions. 

So far, then, the Times is only to be accused of passing off false 
gems for true, affecting all the time to be a profound and an 
honest connoisseur. But a little reflection will show, what this 
pamphlet is intended to illustrate by a striking example — namely, 
the danger to which this course exposes us. In our ignorance of 
the cause of some great foreign convulsion, we judge of it partly 
by the way in which it affects our interests, and partly in accord- 
ance with certain traditional prejudices. There must be some- 
thing radically wrong in a war which affects our supplies ot 
cotton ; and we cannot credit a race who chew tobacco and wear 
bowie knives with any heroic virtues. Judgments really deter- 
mined by shallow prejudices can only be supported by constant 
perversion of the facts. Ignorant people, even though they affect 
to be infallible, can pervert facts with genuine unconsciousness. 
They deduce their premises from their conclusions without the 
least guess that they are illogical. It is only necessary to fix 
the attention upon the set of facts that make for the side they have 
taken, and to shut their eyes to all others. Thus the next step 
of our infallible expounder of national opinions is to lay down 
authoritatively a theory, intended not so much to be accurate, as 
to serve as some justification for that which has come by a kind 
of accident to be the popular opinion. The evil which follows 
from this is obvious. The American naturally believes that the 
Times is, in fact, the authorized mouthpiece of English sentiment. 
He credits it with all the mysterious knowledge which it claims to 
possess, and assumes that in listening to it he hears the matured 



American Affairs. 



7 



opinions of the most educated and reflective minds of England. 
Finding a complete perversion of his case, he naturally again 
attributes it to malice rather than ignorance. He cannot believe 
that such pretended wisdom covers so much emptiness ; and he 
attributes to wilful falsehood what is at worst a desire to flatter its 
readers, overriding a love of severe historical truth. Our American 
thus assumes very falsely, though very naturally, that the English 
people hate him, abuse him, refuse to see his merits, and 
knowingly accept the vilest caricatures of his purpose ; he does 
not understand that we have stumbled into mistakes, and that 
our blunders have been pampered and exaggerated by our 
flatterers. He would naturally reply by abuse to our abuse ; 
even if his own press had not already acted with as much 
recklessness and want of principle as the Times. And so the 
good feeling, for which should all wish, is hopelessly destroyed for 
a time. 

In explaining the process more in detail, I hope I may render 
some slight service towards producing a better understanding. I 
cannot see the force of a late piteous appeal of the Times " to let 
bygones be bygones." It is sufficiently impudent after abusing 
a man incessantly, and being mistaken in all you have said, 
to request him to forget all about it. "I have been spitting upon 
" your Jewish gaberdine, calling you misbeliever, cutthroat dog, 
" and other pretty names for four years; but now — I freely forgive 
" you." 

This, however, I leave the Times to reconcile with its own 
lofty sense of dignity. I wish bygones to be bygones, as between 
the English and American peoples, for I think that each has 
misunderstood the other. The most effective way of securing 
this result would be to throw our Jonahs overboard, to upset the 
credit of the mischief-makers who have interfered between us, and 
to withdraw our countenance from the blustering impostor who 
has been speaking all this time in our name without any due 



8 The "Times" on the American War. 



authority. Two men sometimes quarrel because each has been 
barked at by his neighbour's cur, and fancies that his neighbour 
has set it on. The best way of making peace is to prove that, 
after all, it is nothing but a dog barking. 

II. — The "Times" as a Prophet. 

If a man may be pardoned for prophesying at all in political 
matters, he may be pardoned for making frequent blunders. No 
human intelligence can unravel the complicated play of forces by 
which the fate of nations is determined ; and yet much may be 
learned from a man's prophecies. They show us by implication 
what view he takes of the present, though they may throw very 
little light on the future. If a man should tell us that Heenan 
was certain to beat Sayers because he had drawn first blood, we 
should set him down as a bad judge of prize-fighting. His pro- 
phecy would prove him ignorant of the very conditions of the 
noble art, or ignorant of the strength of Sayers' constitution. 
By quoting a few prophecies from the Times y it will, I think, 
be tolerably evident that it had completely omitted from its 
calculations some element which ought to have been taken into 
account. There is one other point to be noticed. The Times 
may reply to some of its adversaries — We both prophesied in 
the dark, and though your prophecy came right and mine wrong, 
that is nothing to boast of. This excuse will hardly serve to 
account for the fact that the Times has prophesied the success 
of the South as confidently as the success of the North, and for 
the further fact that it has always boasted of its consistency and 
foresight. I will quote a few of its vaticinations. 

Nov. 26, i860. — "It is evident, on the smallest reflection, that 
" the South, even if united, could never resist for three months 
" the greatly preponderating strength of the North." 

April 30, 1 86 1. — It hopes that "the certain failure of all 



The " Times'' as a Prophet. 



9 



" attempts at coercion will be discovered by the Washington 
" Government soon enough to save the country from being 
" drenched in blood." 

May 9, 1861. — "The reduction of the seceding States is an 
" almost inconceivable idea." 

July 18. — "No war of independence ever terminated unsuc- 
" cessfully except where the disparity of force is far greater 
" than it is in this case," and (July 19) " We prefer a frank recog- 
" nition of Southern independence to the policy avowed in 
" the President's message, solely because we foresee, as by- 
" standers, that this is the issue in which, after infinite loss and 
" humiliation, the contest must result." 

The character thus indicated of the philosophic bystander 
seeing things more clearly than was given to the foolish and pig- 
headed Northerners who persisted in going their own way, was 
perhaps that in which the Times most delighted to appear. 
v Aug. 27. — It appears in the same character, modified by a 
stronger dash of the profound philosopher. England, it says, 
might as well attempt to conquer France, or, indeed, better; for 
the Northerners are not (as we should, of course, be in the case 
supposed) agreed amongst themselves. The only parallel in 
history is the French invasion of Russia, but Napoleon had far 
greater resources than the North, and the South is far stronger 
than Russia. " We are in a condition to give advice," which is, 
in short, for North and South to part friends. The Times never 
could learn, though incessantly burning its fingers, to keep clear 
of these dangerous historical parallels. 

By the beginning of 1862 it had become still more confident. 
January 14, 1862, it declares that this was a case "in which 
" success was only possible with overwhelming odds ; but here 
" the odds were all on the Southern side." As throwing some 
light upon this audacious assertion, I may quote the Times of 
September 24, 1862, where, in anticipation of Maryland rising to 



io 



The " Times" on the American War. 



join Lee, it says, that the South have at this moment more than 
half the total population on their side ; and it makes a rough 
calculation, apparently in utter ignorance of the census, and 
certainly in the flattest contradiction to it, of the rival forces. 
There were, it says, twelve millions on the side of the North, 
nine on the side of the South, and eight millions "between," 
who are now gravitating to the Southern side. Now, as in all the 
Slave States, including the Border States, which never left the 
Union, there are only just twelve millions, and as there are nine- 
teen millions of distinct Northern population, the Times has here 
been cooking its facts in a manner quite beyond my powers of 
arithmetic. On April 30 it had spoken of a " dozen great 
" territories, with eight million inhabitants, as warlike as any on 
" the face of the globe." September 30, it proved that the 
blockade must be ineffective and could only slightly raise the 
price of cotton. " If the war were only safe to last, we can imagine 
" no surer way of making a fortune than by setting about to 
" baffle its Custom-house officers and cruisers," — a silly remark 
enough, because the chance of making a fortune necessarily 
implies a great risk, but illustrative of the predictive powers of the 
Times. Six months afterwards (March 8, 1862) it was engaged 
in proving that the blockade was already effective. 

Jan. 15, 1862. — 'The Times, perhaps, culminated as a prophet. 
"How long," it inquired, "is this to last? Not long enough 
" for the conquest of the South. Shall we give the volunteers two 
" months as the period necessary to enlighten them as to the 
" difference between paper dollars and silver dollars % It will be 
" ample time. We need not give the contractors nearly so 
" long. . . . The army of the Potomac will melt away in- 
" sensibly, or, if it be so unfortunate as to be down South, it will 
" die away unfed and unsuccoured in the swamps of Secessia. 
" The beginning of the end has come." The Times announced 
that it was impossible to carry on war (that is, as it explained 



The " Times " as a Prophet. 



1 1 



afterwards, " offensive war") upon paper money ; and a collapse 
would necessarily follow in two months. Truly, prophets should 
read history. 

A singular thing now happened. The North perversely, and in 
utter disregard of the Times, took New Orleans, Fort Donelson, 
Newberne, Beaufort, and other places, and seemed to be carrying 
all before them. The Times at once showed, as I shall have here- 
after to remark, several signs of conversion to their cause. For 
the present I need only mention its prophecies. 

March 31. — It confesses with interesting frankness that all 
calculations (all its calculations) had gone wrong £< on account 
" of the unexpected and unastonishing resolution of the North, 
" of which it would be unjust to depreciate the spirit, &c." We 
failed to sympathize, " not that we sympathized with slave- 
" holders or approved the wilful destruction of a great political 
" fabric, but that we thought the fact accomplished and its 
" reversal beyond possibility." 

The resources of the North have now begun to tell. They 
are twenty millions to ten, and can command the sea. (On 
July 21, four months later, they speak contemptuously of "the 
" few shallow reasoners in this country, who are always telling 
"us that twenty millions must in the end beat ten millions" — 
" a silly fallacy" which had received a practical refutation in 
M'Clellan's defeat.) The slaves had not risen, as was predicted. 
As for finances, "it is beyond all question that the North is 
getting on smoothly enough for the present." Still, if the South 
persevered, they must establish their independence. 

May 28. — " That the Federals have established an ascendency in 
" the field is beyond all question." " The whole story is a mystery 
" as well as a marvel. It is almost as hard to believe what has 
" occurred as to imagine what may ultimately happen." To call 
a thing a mystery is to make two assertions : one, that you don't 
understand it yourself; the other, that no one else understands it. 



12 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



June 28. — After a long discussion of the war, it comes to 
the conclusion, " the superior numbers and resources of the North 
we look upon as certain in the end to prevail." 

Directly after so positive an assertion, and shortly after a decla- 
ration, that the whole story was " a mystery and a marvel," I am 
not surprised to find the Times recover its complacency at a 
bound. M'Clellan's expedition was at a standstill. 

July 3, 1862. — " We," it says, "have been right, and the North 
" wrong in so many things that our opinion is at any rate entitled 
" to consideration." "We" means England, with the exception 
of an insignificant minority, and, of course, as interpreted by the 
Times. 

And for the next two years and a half, it prophesies with un- 
abated vigour in the old direction. The only pause was during the 
spring of 1864, and is to be attributed probably to the Schleswig- 
Holstein difficulties which attracted the public attention. 

I will give a few specimens, though many are unnecessary, as 
models of pointed, vigorous, and unfulfilled prediction. 

Sept. 11. — The talk of putting down the rebellion, punishing 
treason, " putting down and crushing out rebellion, is mere 
verbiage." 

Jan. 17, 1863 (in answer to Mr. Bright). — " We have committed 
" the unpardonable crime of giving the Government of the 
" Northern States credit for some good sense and humanity. We 
" have predicted that sooner or later the North must see that its 
11 enterprise is hopeless, and that it must submit, as the mother 
" country submitted eighty years ago. We have been mistaken 
" thus far, not in the fortunes of war, not in our calculation of the 
" Confederate strength or weakness, not in the cost of the war or 
" the condition of American finance, but in the one single hope that 
" the Federals would see what all the world except themselves see." 

March 19. — " They might as well try to save it (the Union) as 
" the Heptarchy." 



The " Times " as a Prophet. 



13 



The next is a very pretty specimen of the genuine Times 
mixtures ; a little tine writing, a good deal of arrogance, and a 
spice of unmixed abuse all delivered from the " philosophical 
bystander" point of view. 

May 28. — People " naturally asked whether the gentleman 
" was to rule in the old world and the opposite character in 
" the new. It is vain to look for those higher principles from 
" which alone we might expect any settlement of the question. 
" . . . If they persist in the rule of might, there is only 
" one result, they will just annihilate one another. A miserable 
" remnant, a ruined country, a relapse into savagery, and other 
" evils unknown and inconceivable will be the only possible 
" result. . . . From this vantage ground " (that of the British 
Constitution) " we tell these poor drowning wretches that they 
" have no chance whatever, but to forget their dream of infinite 
" numbers, of boundless territory, of inexhaustible wealth, and 
" irresistible might, and bow low like children to the teaching of 
" right. Let them just consider what they ought to do, and what 
" ' ought ' means, and have some chance of getting out of this 
" difficulty without blasting a whole continent. We do not say 
" this is an easy or altogether a pleasant course, but it is the 
" only course that does not lead to utter destruction." 

The poor wretches would not drown, but the Times was not 
disheartened. 

July 21. — "We forecast very naturally and pleasantly that as 
" reunion is impossible, and the only object of fighting is to have 
" the last blow, the winning side would be glad to make a kind 
"and generous use of its advantage." 

Aug. 31. — We find the philosophic bystander again. " In every 
" civil war the combatants have been blind to prospects that every 
" bystander could foresee ; and we suppose this terrible and cruel 
" struggle will linger on till the North has no means left to fight, 
" and the South nothing but freedom left to fight for." 



14 The " Times" on the American War. 



Oct. 19. — We come across a new and ingeniously accurate his- 
torical parallel. " It will be found as impossible to overwhelm 
" the native levies of men of English race fighting for their lives 
" and possessions " (a delicate periphrasis for slaves) " by any 
" number of foreign hirelings as it was for Carthage with the 
" greatest general the world ever saw at the head of her armies, 
" and the wealth of the world at her command, to hire Gauls, 
" Spaniards, and Numidians enough to break down the stubborn 
" spirit of the less ably led Roman militia. A nation fighting for 
" its liberty may not come victorious out of the conflict, but 
" history affords no example that we are aware of, of an invasion 
" and subjection of a warlike people by an invader who scarcely 
" ever was enabled to sleep on the field of battle and whose con- 
" stant boast was not that he had routed his enemy, but that he 
" placed his army in safety." 

Dec. 24. — " Yet, though we greatly underrated " (as is now 
evident) " the difficulties of the North, the opinion was almost 
" universal that subjugation of the South was impossible. Even 
" when the North has surrendered her liberty and beggared her 
" finances, she will not be able permanently to hold these immense 
" countries and keep down their hostile populations on these terms." 

In the early part of 1864 prophecies became rare, as I have 
already remarked. Although the Times vehemently denied any 
value to the Northern successes, it probably felt that the taking 
of Vicksburg and the battle of Gettysburg had changed the aspect 
of the war. 

Its spirits, however, gradually recovered, and it asserts — 

May 3. — " The present prospects of the Confederates in this 

fourth year of the war are brighter than ever before." 
July 5. — The failure of George III. was not more complete 

" than that which the contemplation of affairs in the middle of 

" 1864 shows us to have attended the efforts of the Federal 

" Government." 



The " Times " as a Prophet. 



15 



The next is a specimen of a pleasant figure of speech by which 
the Times occasionally describes itself as " all Europe " : — 

Aug. 22. — "The North must see that it is persisting in an 
" enterprise allowed by all Europe to be hopeless, and proved to 
" be so by events up to the present time. ... In Europe 
" we can only employ the lessons of this unnatural conflict to 
" confirm our convictions of the hopelessness of the war and 
" the necessity of a speedy peace." 

Sept. 14. — " The public will admit that they have not been 
" misguided by our comments. The great fact which we asserted 
" from the first is now " (six months before the end of the war) 
" placed beyond the reach of controversy. We said that the 
" North could never subdue the South, and the North has now 
" proclaimed the same conclusion," (This refers to the Chicago 
Convention.) 

Oct. 10. — " Ruin stares the Union in the face if the war is to 
" be conducted by General M'Clellan, and if it be conducted 
" by President Lincoln the result must be precisely the same." 

Nov. 12. — The Times made an unintentionally good hit. 
" The subjugation of the Confederacy must be deferred by the 
" most sanguine Republican to the spring of 1865." 

Dec. 14. — " To negotiation it must come at last, and the 
" sooner the inevitable resolution is taken the better it will 
" be for America and the world. . . . We, the bystanders, 
" saw things more clearly than the actors, and we see them 
u more clearly now." 

Feb. 22, 1865. — After explaining that Americans suffer from 
a certain " monomania " of devotion to the Union, it adds : — 
" So long as that idol stands on its pedestal the war must rage 
" on, and we see no prospect of its early termination." 

The Times was evidently not quite confident, however, and 
it endeavoured to effect a strategic movement, of which the 
nature will appear from the following extracts : — 



i6 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



March 6. — Sherman's "unexampled successes" expose him 
to a serious embarrassment. " He takes these towns one after 
" another, but they are no use to him when taken. He is 
" experiencing a difficulty which was always foretold. The 
" Federals have regained their military reputation ; but, if the 
" South shall resolve to stand out to the end, they have made 
" but little progress towards the conclusion of the war." 

Its spirits gave way for a moment, and it confesses, March 8, 
" The end is not far : the cause is simply bleeding to 
" death." 

Once more it rallied. 

March 14. — " Everybody in Europe " (I have already ex- 
plained that this is a circuitous formula for "we" in the Times) 
" thought that the military ascendency which Sherman has at 
" length established would have been secured by the North in 
" a single campaign ; but what, it was asked, would be done 
" then ? and that is the question before us now." Or, as it 
says more fully in answer to a speech of Mr. Bright's, — 

March 15. — "We thought that the North would instantly 
" overrun the South, &c. &c. These things are only now 
" beginning to come to pass. They have come to pass much later 
" and in a much less degree than we had anticipated; but then 
" we thought, and still think, that the real danger and difficulties 
" of the conflict would begin. ... It remains to be seen 
" whether we are wrong in these anticipations. When we are 
" shown to be so, it will be time to taunt us with our mistakes " 
(though it thinks Mr. Bright has made too many to throw the 
first stone). "At any rate, we are not yet convinced of our 
" error, and need something more than Mr. Bright's oracular 
" assertion to prove it." 

Mr. Bright has quite a peculiar talent for striking flashes of 
nonsense out of the Times. 

My concluding passage is not exactly a prophecy. 



The " Times " as a Prophet. 



17 



April 19. — "The catastrophe seems complete, and in all its 
" accessories calculated to impress people with a feeling that 
" the work is accomplished, and that the civil war is really at 
" an end." 

I lay little stress upon the fact, taken by itself, that the Times 
prophecies came absurdly wrong. But I say that its errors 
were of a class which, besides the ordinary measure of human 
fallibility, implies a total misconception of the conditions of 
tjie struggle. An astronomer's prediction of an eclipse might 
fail from a mere arithmetical blunder ; or it might fail because 
his calculation assumed a wrong configuration of the solar 
system. Thus the Times believed, or at least it occasionally 
asserted, that the South had actually greater resources than the 
North. It maintained that the North could not continue the war 
for two months, on account of financial exhaustion. In other 
words, it was as ignorant of statistics as of history. It failed to 
recognize the extraordinary resources of the North, or to 
remember that wars can be carried on with a depreciated 
currency. It is true that it contradicted itself flatly on both 
these points. The superior numbers and resources of the North 
were, as it said (June 28, 1862), certain to prevail; and as it 
kindly observed (August 15, 1862), " it is a mistake to suppose that 
" money or credit, or tolerable supplies of food, clothing, and 
" ordinary comforts are necessary to the work of cutting throats, 
" blowing up trains, and burning houses ;" in other words, it was 
driven to a paroxysm of abuse, by discovering that the Northern 
credit had not collapsed nor the war ceased on account of a sus- 
pension of cash payments. But the incessant predictions which 
I have quoted are doubtless founded upon the assumptions of 
Northern weakness in resources and in credit, and they, therefore, 
imply an error, not merely in calculation, but in knowledge of 
the primary data. 

2 



1 8 The " Times'' on the American War. 

The great mass of prophetic matter in the Times thus implied 
a false conception of the facts. But it was incapable of even 
holding steadily to one conception. Before the war began, and 
in the spring of 1862, its prophecies were diametrically opposite 
to its prophecies at most other periods. In the spring of 1864 
it was neutral. The Times > in i860, anticipated Mr. Seward's 
prophecy that the North would conquer the South in ninety 
days. In 1861 it prophesied that the North would abandon its 
attempts in sixty days. And (November 4, 1862) it endorsed 
Mr. Jefferson Davis's assertion that the war could be carried 
on in Virginia for twenty years after the capture of Richmond. 
Mr. Seward was wrong, and Mr. Davis was wrong ; the Times 
had the curious felicity of combining both blunders. 

The explanation of this doubtless is, that the Times had no 
fixed theory whatever. It looked on like an ignorant person at 
a game of whist, knowing nothing of the hands, and therefore 
crying out as each side took a trick or played a trump that it 
was certain to win the rubber. It would not believe that, in 
order to hold its own, the weaker side had played out all its 
strength, while the stronger had still its best cards in reserve. 
And thus, while the South was sinking in the final struggle, the- 
Times became more confident than ever. Whilst Grant held Lee 
within the lines of Richmond and Sherman pierced the heart of 
Georgia, the Times was confidently pronouncing the war hopeless, 
and actually pluming itself in unconscious absurdity upon the 
confirmation of its sapient predictions. Like a man in a dark 
room, it knocked its head straight against the wall, without even 
putting out its hands to save itself, 



Slavery and the War. 



9 



III. — Slavery and the War. 

I have, I hope, raised a prima facie presumption that the Times 
was labouring under some delusion. It had omitted some element 
from its calculations, sufficient to distort the whole history of the 
struggle. The story, to use its own words, was " a mystery and 
a marvel it was a mystery and a marvel simply because the 
Times was not in possession of the one clue which led through 
the labyrinth. A foreigner looking on at a cricket-match is apt to 
think the evolutions of the players mysterious ; and they will be 
enveloped in sevenfold mystery if he has a firmly preconceived 
prejudice that the ball has nothing whatever to do with the game. 
At every new movement, he must invent a new theory to show 
that the apparent eagerness to pick up the ball is a mere pretext ; 
that no one really wants to hit it, or to catch it, or to throw it at 
the wickets ; and that its constant appearance is due to a mere 
accident. He will be very lucky if some of his theories do not 
upset each other. 

As, in my opinion, the root of all the errors of the Times may 
be found in its views about slavery, which lay, as is now 
evident, at the bottom of the whole quarrel, I may be pardoned 
for recalling very shortly some well-known and now generally 
recognized truths. I shall then be able to show how the Times 
treated them, and how, by cutting out the central knot of the 
difficulty, the whole skein fell into hopeless entanglement. 

All candid men will admit that the cause of the American war 
lay in the questions relating to slavery. So many other issues 
were raised beyond the simple one of abolition or non-abolition, 
and so many political principles were inextricably interwoven with 
the question of how to deal with slavery, that interested persons 
were enabled for a time to impose upon ignorant and superficial 
observers. Those who judged merely from the confused cries 

2 — 2 



20 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



that rose at every moment from the battle-field, instead of 
inquiring into the antecedents of the conflicting parties, might be 
easily deceived. 

That slavery was in some sense the cause of the war rests upon 
evidence equal to that which would satisfy the rigid requirements 
of physical philosophy. By a simple inspection of the map, it 
appears that the great rent which divided the Union coincided 
with the line between slaveholders and non-slaveholders, and 
coincided with no other line of division. It divided States, it 
split masses homogeneous in their agricultural or their commercial 
interests, but throughout its whole length it divided slavery from 
free labour. 

More than this, the repulsion between the opposing masses 
varied in direct proportion to the degree in which one was, and 
the other was not, infected with slavery. The centres of the 
slaveholding interest were the centres of secession. The districts 
where slavery was dying out were divided in their allegiance. 
Those where it was legally or practically extinct were unanimous 
for the Union. 

More than this, again, the conflict of interest had led to 
discussions prolonged over a generation. More eager and 
vigorous debates had never raged upon any subject. 

Those debates had turned exclusively upon the compromises 
which might reconcile the rival interests of slaveholders and free 
men. From Jefferson to Clay every American statesman had 
pointed to slavery as the rock upon which the Union was pre- 
destined to split. Every compromise that had been devised to 
reconcile the two sections turned upon slavery, and slavery 
exclusively. The Missouri compromise, the compromises of 
1850, the compromises that were elaborately discussed at the 
instance of the Border States on the eve of secession, and with a 
view to avoiding it, all bore upon slavery, and upon nothing else. 
To put all this out of sight required stupendous ignorance, or 



Slavery and the War. 



21 



equally stupendous impudence. There was, however, one chance 
of confusing the question. The Abolitionists in the North held 
slavery to be an accursed thing, to be attacked at the sacrifice of 
the Union, or of any merely human institution. The Democrats 
held that New York could no more interfere with slavery in 
South Carolina than with slavery in Brazil. The Republicans 
differed from both parties by holding that the powers of the 
Constitution enabled them to exclude slavery from the territories, 
and wished to use those powers so as incidentally to hamper and 
confine it within fixed limits. The Abolitionists and Republicans 
held slavery to be pernicious. The Democrats might or might 
not agree with them. The point upon which they necessarily 
differed was the right of the free section of the Union to attack 
slavery directly or indirectly : upon this question there might be 
any number of shades of opinion. Now it was possible to 
confound an unwillingness to attack slavery by unconstitutional 
means with an unwillingness to attack it at all, and / thus with 
indifference to it, or even direct approval of it. 

All Englishmen, except habitual drunkards, object to intoxica- 
tion. None but a small clique would legislate directly against 
drunkards. It would be as unfair to accuse the Times of 
indifference to the evils of drink, because it respected individual 
liberty too much to legislate against drinking, as it was to accuse 
Democrats of necessarily sympathizing with slavery, because they 
respected State rights too much to attack it even indirectly. But 
it would be still more unfair to accuse a man of favouring 
drunkenness who should be in favour of limiting the spread of 
new public-houses whilst refusing to interfere with the old ; and, 
in the parallel case, a sincere Republican could, by no honest 
man, be accused of indifference to slavery. We shall presently 
see that the Times made use of this contemptible sophistry to 
throw doubt upon the sincerity of the great mass of American 
parties. To complete the circle of abuse, it was only necessary 



22 



The " Times " <w y4 mcrican War. 



to accuse the Abolitionists of fanaticism. A man who denounced 
slavery at all hazards was called an " exterminater " (their claim 
to this title has received a curious comment in the fact that the Aboli- 
tionists were amongst the most conspicuous advocates of mercy to 
Jefferson Davis) ; a man who opposed it indirectly, or not at all, was 
a hypocrite for preferring any other consideration to that of abolition. 

And here I may add, that a further amount of doubt was 
thrown upon the motives of the Northern States by the fact 
that the chief motive of the great mass was not hatred to slavery, 
but love of the Union. No one can doubt that this was the case. 
Slavery was attacked, not as an evil in itself, but as the cause of 
evil to the Union ; this is true, but it is a very bad reason for 
imputing insincerity to the assailants. I forbid my neighbour to 
get drunk, not primarily for his good, but because I am afraid 
that when he gets drunk he will break my head. This seems to 
be a very sensible motive. I am not arguing that Englishmen 
ought to sympathize with this worship of the Union ; I am only 
saying that it was grossly unfair to cry out against the sincerity of 
anti-slavery zeal, because it was in most men's minds the result, 
and not the cause, of zeal for the Union. 

Of the attempt to set up the tariff question as the real point at 
issue I need say little. That lie is dead, it is enough to remark 
that the tariff which favoured New England manufacturers or 
Pennsylvanian ironmasters, bore as hardly upon the West as it 
did upon the South, and still more certainly bore as hardly upon 
the parts of Virginia and Tennessee which adhered to the Union, 
as upon the parts which seceded. The line of separation every- 
where followed the tortuous geographical line between slavery 
and free soil, whilst it cut at right angles the lines bounding 
opposite commercial interests. The burden, borne for the benefit 
of the East, weighed equally upon the West and South ; as it 
caused no complaints except in the South, we may presume that 
there discontent was due to some deeper iying influence. 



Slavery and the War. 



23 



I have endeavoured to lay down this sketch-map the better to 
exhibit the eccentricity of the course steered by the Times. 
Those who may differ from me as to the relations of some of the 
principles noticed, may still agree in appreciating the facility with 
which the Times can take them up or lay them down in every 
possible permutation and combination. 

IV.— Change of the "Times" Policy. 

On the 4th of January, 1861, a letter upon the origin of the war 
appeared in the Times. The conclusions of the writer were 
summed up in these words, "Whether two systems of labour, one 
" so dead, the other so full of life, can continue to live side by 
" side is a problem which the United States are now attempting 
" to solve for themselves." A historical sketch was given to prove 
that all political struggles in the States had hitherto turned upon 
the same question. The Times ^ accepting these conclusions, argued 
that Mr. Buchanan, the then President, put the question upon too 
low a ground. Mr. Buchanan, it says, assumed that slavery was 
indifferent, that New England had no right to discuss it. He 
never remarks, as it indignantly declares, that " what the Free States 
" require, they are morally justified in requiring, whilst what the 
" slave States demand, they can demand only at the cost of 
" justice and right." If the Union gave no right to discuss 
slavery, the Union would be so " unsubstantial and shadowy 
that it ought to be dissolved." But, of course, we " dispute the 
fact;" The South was more responsible than the North fof 
the previous agitatiom (t We cannot disguise from ourselves that 
" there is a right and a wrong in this question, and that the right 
" belongs/ with all its advantages, to the States of the North." 

During January and February, 186 1, the Times stopped every 
logical avenue of escape for Southern advocates. It proved the 
South td be morally wrong, To put forward such claims 
necessarily implied a low moral standard. " The North," says 



24 



The " Times" on the American War. 



the Times (January 7, 186 1) " are for freedom of discussion. 
" The South resist freedom of discussion with the tar brush and 
" the pine fagot." The open avowal of such gross injustice 
could be accounted for only by the grossest ignorance. It was a 
kind of madness marvellous in a land of schools and newspapers ; 
but " the mass of the people of the Southern States are in a state 
of deplorable ignorance," scarcely better than that of the Irish 
peasantry. The South Carolina manifesto was (January 19, 1861) 
remarkable for " utter falsehood." It proved that the State " was 
" treading the path which leads to the downfall of nations and 
" the misery of families." But had any one a right to stop them 
from following that path? The limes answered, yes. To the 
" specious plea" that the South might colonize as well as the 
North, carrying the peculiar institution with them, " the answer is 
obvious " (January 28) : Slavery is in very truth a thing 
" hateful and abominable," and if the South should be so rash as 
to resist the constraints placed upon it, they would be answerable 
for the consequences. But the North were justified, not only on 
grounds of morality, but of expediency. It argues elaborately 
(January 18) that the North have the strongest reasons for 
resisting secession. If they gave way, the Union would be broken 
into fragments, of which all the richest would fall to the South. 
(March 12.) — If secession were permitted New York would 
probably set up as a free port. A doubt might still remain as to 
the constitutionality of Northern interference. Here the Times 
clenches the question by an argument, which would be indeed 
conclusive, were it not for its betrayal of the flimsy nature of its 
knowledge. (January 29, 186 1.) — In criticizing a speech of 
Mr. Seward's, it expresses its delight at finding him at last 
occupying a ground which it is strange that American statesmen 
should only just have begun to perceive. It illustrates this ground 
by a pleasant fiction— of a proposal said to have been made some 
time ago for a simultaneous secession of South Carolina from 



Change of Policy. 



25 



the United States, and of Lancashire from England, to coalesce 
into a State based upon cotton and slavery. To such a 
proceeding we should naturally demur. In the case of Lancashire 
we should not go back to the agreement between Hugh Lupus 
and William the Conqueror. South Carolina would of course 
have no right to go back to the days of Pinckney and Washington. 
" So far as the Central Government is concerned, there is 
" absolutely no difference." This is a vigorous statement of the 
principles of the old Federal party, and of the doctrines which 
have now been demonstrated at the sword's point. But what 
follows is an example of an ignorant supporter trumping his 
partner's best card. The American people, says the Times, in 
their collective capacity have made the Government, and " left 
" the remaining functions to be executed within certain terri- 
" torial divisions called States. . . . Any individual seeking 
" to destroy the central Government is guilty of treason against 
" it, and the same thing is true of any aggregate of individuals, 
" even if they should constitute a majority of a State or of 
" several States." The naivete with which these propositions are 
set forth, as something new to American statesmen, and the 
confidence with which the writer mistakes his own guesses for 
established facts, renders the whole argument inimitable. 

So far the Times had pledged itself to these principles, that the 
South were attempting, and the North resisting, an iniquitous 
enterprise ; that the North were bound, not only by morality, but 
by considerations of expediency, to resist it ; and that under the 
Constitution they had the fullest legal power to resist it. It is not 
surprising after this that the Times (February 7) claims the grati- 
tude of the Northern States for that exhibition of English good 
feeling which, as it modestly anticipates, will enable them to win 
back the Border States, and through the Border States the South; 
nor that it should (February 19) express a hope that " the force 
" of political cohesion will be too strong even for the ambition and 



26 The " Times" on the American War. 



" sectional hatred of a Charleston demagogue." Mr. Lincoln or 
Mr. Seward might have been satisfied with the principles of the 
Times, which, indeed, though not according to knowledge, were 
substantially identical with those of the Republican party. It 
was rather more outspoken with regard to certain Democratic 
weaknesses, although handling them with considerable tenderness, 
and as to the wickedness of slavery. But for a few slips such as 
that above noticed, it might have been supposed that the editor 
had secured writers who had really studied the subject, and that 
he was prepared to take a side founded upon some intelligible 
theory. It is always, however, easy for writers of such ability as 
those who form the staff of the Times to ape a language which 
they do not really understand. Like a clever swell-mobsman in 
polite society, they impose upon superficial observers ; though a 
word or gesture at unguarded moments may expose the real 
amount of their knowledge. During March and April, 1861, 
this was illustrated by the curious perplexity induced in the Times 
by the appearance of the tariff question. Its New York corre* 
spondent assured it that the tariff grievance was a mere blind j 
that it had been lost sight of since 1846, and was now meant as 
a bid for foreign support, The Times hesitated. (March 5.)— Some 
people, it said, thought that the slavery question was a mere 
pretext, (March 8.)— However, it considered that " the North was 
bringing discredit on the intrinsic merits of their cause*" The 
only point of similarity between this war aiid the war of inde- 
pendence Was> that in both there was a dispute about customs 
duties. (March 9.) — If this tariff were once out of the way, we 
would soon show on which side our sympathies really are. " There 
" are no disunionists," it emphatically observed, " upon this side of 
" the water." (March 1 2.) — It roundly declares protection is "quite 
as much a cause of the war as slavery." (March 14.) — Having 
heard of the compromise resolutions, it thinks that slavery is 
the chief cause. Protection was mere retaliation. (March 19;)—- 



Change of Policy. 



27 



Slavery and tariff are on a par. (March 20.) — It inclines to the 
South, because it has heard that the South are free-traders, and 
intend to suppress the external slave trade. The South, however, 
is reported to meditate an export duty on cotton. This " short- 
sighted policy " brings the Times back again ; and, positively 
for the last time, it asserted without reservation that the North 
was in the right. 

Two months of complete approval of the North were thus 
followed by two months of oscillation. The Times had " missed 
stays " in going about, and was pointing in rapid succession to 
any number of points of the compass. The discussion whether 
slavery or tariff was the real grievance is, at best, like a discussion 
whether Chichester spire fell down because the foundations were 
unsound, or because a wind was blowing. The commercial 
grievance was a cause, but an entirely subsidiary cause, which, 
except as acting upon an incipient schism, could have produced 
no effect. That the Times should put the slavery and the tariff 
as co-ordinate causes, and that so shortly after fully stating the 
case as concerns slavery, shows strikingly the shallowness of its 
knowledge. Its ignorance follows not from isolated blunders, 
but from a want of any theory by which the observed phenomena 
may be combined into any sort of unity. It is like a rustic 
looking at a volcano, and wondering whether the explosion is 
caused by the fire or the smoke. The Times has often been com- 
pared to a weathercock, fancying that it decides the way the 1 
wind blows. It should be added, that it is too iow to feel the 
more permanent currents of the atmosphere, and swings round 
in obedience to every gust that eddies through Printing-house 
Square. 

A complete change was about to come over its spirit, and the* 
change nearly coincided with the fall of Fort Sumter. It distinctly 
opposed the Northern claims • May 7, appeared a remarkable 
article, " The North," it said , " may be justified in its denun- 



28 The "Times" on the American War. 



" ciation of slavery, but it is not fighting for the purpose of 
" driving slavery out of the land. The South may be justified 
" in protecting its independence, but that independence was not 
" assailed. Stripped of its pretexts and trappings, the war stands 
" out as a mere contest for territory, or a struggle for aggrandize- 
" ment. Something may be said for either side, most for the 
" North ; but nothing to justify civil war." And, quoting the 
great idol of English respectability, " Lincoln/' it says, " and 
" Davis have abruptly closed with an alternative at which the 
" Duke of Wellington stood aghast," namely, civil war. If an 
Irish secession had broken out, and a party of Fenians seized 
the forts in Cork Harbour, the Iron Duke would undoubtedly 
have requested his erring brethren to part in peace. * 

The change to the tone, of which the key-note was thus struck, 
was the great change of the war; and, as it was the cause of 
considerable criticism, it is worth while to examine a little into 
the apology put forward by the Times itself. 

This was two-fold. It consisted, first, of a tu quoque. The 
fall of Fort Sumpter startled the North out of its dream of 
concession and peaceful compromise. The Times had till then 
been in advance even of the Northern opinion. Its worst com- 
plaint against them had been that, owing to their democratic 
institutions (January 24), they were deficient in loyalty to the 
Union. The insult to the national flag changed their spirit like 
magic. They showed an enthusiasm that amazed even their 
friends. If, to use the arguments of the Times itself, they had 
not opposed the wicked designs of the South, if they had not 
resisted the forcible subtraction of their most valuable territory, 
if they had not resisted a rebellion as clearly unlawful as the 
secession of Lancashire from England, the Times would have been 

* The Times was so much pleased with this article that it reprinted many 
sentences from it verbatim that day fortnight (May 21). Probably it thought 
that no one could remember a Times article for two weeks. 



Change of Policy. 



29 



the first to call them poltroons and empty braggarts. As they 
showed unexpected spirit, the Times said, Pray give in at once ; 
don't fight, whatever you do. When the Northern press com- 
plained of this sudden failure of support, the Times replied, You 
were cool when we were hot ; you can't complain of us for being 
cool now that you are hot. You were willing (June 11) to let 
your erring brethren part in peace. Whilst war was preparing, 
you were all for conciliation. Now that your enemy has given 
you a slap in the face, you have actually lost your temper. It is 
nothing but wounded vanity (June 26). We did not cry out 
enough at your mighty levee en masse; and now you profess anger 
at our reasonable change. This was a calming reply. 

The Times, however, had a much better plea, and one which 
it constantly put forward, in the apparent belief that it afforded 
a full justification. It stated (see especially October 9 and 
November 14) that it changed on discovering the unexpected 
unanimity of the South. The Border States declared for the South 
upon the fall of Fort Sumpter, and the Times, with characteristic 
prescience, saw that this rendered the struggle hopeless. It 
asserted, with every variety of vehement affirmation, that the North 
had no chance. I have already quoted some of these prophecies. 
The first, significantly enough, is on April 30. I have also given 
specimens from May 9, July 18, August 27, September 30, and to 
them I must refer. I am content to assume that the Times changed 
at the moment they saw the cause to be hopeless. It is a highly 
probable statement ; and my only doubt of its entire accuracy 
arises from its positive assertion of November 26, i860, already 
quoted, that the South could not hold out for sixty days. Nothing 
had occurred to change the military prospects, although much had 
occurred to change the sympathies of the Times. Assuming, 
however, for the present, that the Times correctly describes its 
reasons, I would remark that a desertion of the right side the 
instant you believe it to be the weaker side does not necessarily 



30 The "Times" on the American War. 



imply corrupt motives. A war which is a hopeless war is, for that 
reason alone, a wicked war. Advice against litigation may be 
perfectly judicious, although you believe that the litigant has right 
upon his side. But two courses remain. An honest and well- 
informed man who had fallen into the same blunder as the Times 
concerning Southern invincibility, would have carefully grounded 
his advice upon the vanity of Northern hopes. He would not 
have changed his opinion as to the cause or the rights of the 
quarrel. A weak and superficial observer, on the other hand, 
would be certain to make two assumptions : one, that the side 
which for the moment is uppermost is certain to win ; the other, 
that the winning side is necessarily in the right. It requires deep 
convictions to occupy Cato's position, to hold out against the 
charms of the victrix causa. An indolent mind is glad to bring 
its sympathies into harmony with its expectations ; it drifts imper- 
ceptibly into approbation of the conqueror's arguments as well as 
his strategy, and then into a belief that it always did approve of 
them. 

Applying this test, we can speedily judge of the merits of the 
Times. And as the best gauge of its deviations from its old path, 
I return to the slavery question. I have shown that the Times 
started with a very fair statement as to the relations of the war to 
slavery. On May 23 and May 24 appeared a long article from 
Mr. Motley, ably reasserting the principles from which they had 
so strangely departed. The Times would have none of it. It had 
said (March 28) that the only " point of contact " between this 
war and the war of independence was, that there were customs 
duties in both. Now it asserted, May 23, that the spirit of 
George III. had entered into the Northern people ; and May 24, 
it repeated, in opposition to Mr. Motley, that the precedent of 
George III. was applicable. " The North," it said, "seems to have 
a good cause, but it is surprisingly like the cause of England." It 
had gone further in an article by which Mr. Motley's letter was 



Change of Policy. 



3i 



probably provoked. The war, it had said (May 11), was not one 
about slavery, but merely " to keep slavery as one of the social 
" elements of the Union. . . It was a war to keep Southern 
u debtors and their property from getting beyond the grasp 
" of Northern merchants." This ingenious theory completely 
turned the tables, and, as I shall show, was a favourite opinion 
of the Times. Presently, however, the Times made another 
change. Mrs. Beecher Stowe had made an appeal to the anti- 
slavery sentiment of the English people. 

She said, very truly, that it was " an anti-slavery war, not in 

" form but in fact ; " that " national existence and not emancipa- 
" tion was the announced battle-cry ; but national existence was 
- u in this case felt to imply the extinction of slavery." (These 
words, though expressing a sentiment now commonplace, illustrate 
the great difficulty of the American Government. To obtain 
foreign sympathy, they must have proclaimed a crusade against 
slavery ; but, for the all-important purpose of securing unity at 
home, it was necessary to make love of the Union the watch- 
word, as, indeed, it was the efficient motive.) The Times ( 
(September 9) quotes these remarks in Mrs. Stowe's own words, | 
because it would " scruple to attribute to her views so little 
worthy of the authoress of Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mrs. Stowe, as 
it condescends to inform her, "has mistaken an electioneering 
cry for the war-note of a crusade." And with a ludicrous 
pomposity it lays down its own opinion. It was not " an 
accident," it admits, that the fracture took place at the point 
of juncture between slave and free States, though, if we define an 
accident to be an event whose cause is undiscoverable, it is hard 
to say what else it could be. The Times, however, continues : — ■ 
" That this was not the true object of the movement on either 
" side, admits of every proof short of demonstration ; that the 
" slavery question has since been lost sight of in the melee of civil 
" war admits of actual demonstration." Ten days before this was 



32 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



written (August 31) Fremont's proclamation freeing the slaves of 
disloyal owners had already been issued ; and by all who had eyes 
to see (including Mr. Russell, the Times' special correspondent) 
was felt to be the first step towards an inevitable conflict. Upon 
hearing of this proclamation the Times sapiently remarked 
(September 30), as if it was a novel, but not improbable, theory, 
that some people considered abolition to be at the bottom of the 
whole business. Without committing itself to this or the opposite 
opinion, it added that it was highly probable that abolition would 
be adopted as a war measure — not a very rash prediction, after 
abolition had actually commenced in Missouri, but a singular 
comment on its " demonstration " three weeks before that slavery 
had been already lost sight of. 

The fullest confession of faith that I can find is contained in 
a review (January 14, 1862) of Mr. Spence's work — a book 
remarkable for its power of varnishing over the ordinary 
Southern arguments with a thin coating of sham philosophy. 
The Times adopted his conclusions, and spoke (April 26, 
1862) afterwards of Mr. Spence's "admirable work" as clear- 
ing up the subject. The Times, following Mr. Spence, com- 
placently attributes the war to the demoralization of the 
Northern people. That that demoralization, if it were proved to 
exist, should be ever spoken of by Englishmen, except in a tone of 
regret and humiliation, I consider to be a disgrace to the speaker. 
If millions of English-speaking people, brought up in the enjoy- 
ment of our laws, literature, and religion, are, indeed, corrupt to 
the core, we should repent in sackcloth and ashes. The Times, 
however, talks the usual talk about democracy, reckons up the 
burning of slaves, Lynch law, bullying in Congress, and other 
direct products of the slave power, as part of the Northern 
r\ iniquities, and finally reduces the causes of the war to three 
heads. The first is the change in the political balance due to 
emigration; the second, an "original antipathy" aggravated by 



Change of Policy. 



33 



Abolitionists ; the third, the protective policy of the North. To 
repeat what I have already said, none of these causes can even 
be fully stated except as corollaries to the slavery question. 
Emigrants are naturally attracted by free labour ; protective 
tariffs injured East Tennessee or Illinois as much as Eastern 
Virginia or South Carolina, but they only alienated the slave 
States. As for the " original antipathy," the statement about 
Abolitionists is sufficient to prove that it means an antipathy 
between free men and slaveholders. The Times, however, argues 
that slavery is of no importance. " The reader will observe the 
" clear distinction between slavery itself and the agitation 
" for its abolition " — two things which I should have thought it 
impossible to confound. The Times, however, means in a 
blundering way to point out what it afterwards states as follows : 
" As a cause of secession, slavery is subordinate. ... It 
" may be the reel on which the evil has been wound ; but it is 
" not the material of which the coil is made ; it is a delusion, if 
" not a fraud, to represent it otherwise." I don't quite under- 
stand the metaphor, but its general purport is plain enough. 

The Times had thus asserted within a year that slavery was the 
cause of the war ; that slavery was one cause and protection 
another ; that slavery was the cause and protection a pretext ; that 
slavery had little to do with the war and protection much ; that it 
could be " all but demonstrated " that slavery had nothing to do 
with it at first, and " quite demonstrated " that slavery had since 
passed out of sight ; that " some people thought " that abolition 
was at the bottom of the whole business, and that it would very 
probably be the result ; and that slavery was the " reel on which 
" the coil was wound," though " not the material of which the coil 
" was made." In other words, the Times knew nothing about it. 
I shall show directly that its opinions as to the effect of the 
war upon slavery were equally oscillating. 

3 



34 The " Times" on the American War. 



V. — The " Times " on the True Cause of the War. 

I must at first, however, remark upon the attempts which the 
Times made to account for the war, leaving slavery out of the 
question. After such dogged determination to prove that the 
magazine did not blow up on account of the powder, it was 
bound to invent some other cause. For the Times always affects 
the philosophical. Preserving its equilibrium by a series of 
oscillations, it never falls into the fanaticism of either extreme. 
It eschewed the violent abuse of the Tory organs — except when 
abuse was really required — as religiously as it eschewed abolitionist 
declamations. " Surtout point de zele" was its motto, or, in other 
words, " no political principles at any price." Hence, the Times 
had to discover some working explanation of the war not involving 
slavery. It could not adopt the servant-maid's excuse that the 
vase " came broken," and the " three causes " enumerated by 
Mr. Spence were, of course, too absurd to be ever seriously 
mentioned again. 

In the first place the Times said, as a philosopher is bound to 
say, that the separation was owing to far deeper causes than 
slavery. After pooh-poohing those shallow observers who could 
believe that a war between slaveholders and non-slaveholders 
might be in some way connected with slavery, it said boldly 
— (May 30, 1861) — "the inhabitants of the North and those of 
the South are two distinct peoples " of the same stock, as much 
opposed " as the Austrians to the Italians, or the Muscovites to 
the Poles." To test such assertions they should be inverted : it 
would be a singular remark that the Germans differed from the 
Italians as much as the people of East from those of Middle 
Tennessee. (Sept. 19, 1861.) — It proceeded to moralize upon this. 
The tendency in Europe is, it appears, rather " for large States to 
split asunder than for small ones to be consolidated," as may 
be seen in France and Italy. The cause of this tendency is that 



The True Cause of the War. 



35 



11 nationality" is the great modern feeling. North and South have 
separated, because North and South have as little in common as 
Magyar and German. The logic of this is equal to the accuracy of 
its facts. If nationality is the ruling principle, North and South 
should keep together. The Times can only say roundly that they 
differ as much as Magyar and German. It never condescends to 
specify the differences which separate races identical in blood, 
language, religion, laws, and a few other characteristics, and for 
many years bound together in the same political and social 
organizations. A year later — (Jan. 23, 1863) — the Times repeats its 
statement that slavery is only part of the difference, but, as before, 
it declines to state the other part. Some better explanation was 
required. 

One might have supposed that the Times would have set the 
war down to that universal cause of all modern political events 
— democracy. People are apt to fancy that the mere mention of 
democracy gives them claims to be De Tocquevilles. The Times 
felt the temptation ; but there were two objections to its yielding 
to it : first, democracy would not account for the precise line 
taken by the split, and was so far an irrelevant cause logically ; 
secondly, the Times is a Liberal paper. Accordingly, it adopted 
its usual plan of both asserting and denying democracy to be 
the cause. People are apt to declare themselves to be miserable 
sinners, and to deny that they have broken any one of the Ten 
Commandments in particular. By an inverse method, the Times 
denies in general terms that democracy was the cause of the 
war. In detail it constantly lays the blame upon the crimes 
generally associated with democracy. 

" We," says the Times of April 28, 1862, " were never amongst 
" those who exulted over the alleged breakdown of democratic insti- 
" tutions ; we saw from the first that it was not so much democracy 
" as the principle of Federalism, under very peculiar conditions, 
" that was on its trial." It had asserted more distinctly still 



36 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



(September 25, 186 1), that it agreed with its correspondent, that 
the war was not traceable to democracy, and that it has not 
been forced by the mob upon the educated classes. 

A fortnight before (September 12, 1861), in an argument which 
ingeniously combined various classes of blunders, it remarks : — 
" We say nothing of the sacrifice of free institutions, &c. &c, 
" and certainly nothing of gentlemen being ridden out of town 
" on a rail. King Mob, where he is supreme, will naturally 
" require the same agent as any single tyrant." However, the 
Times hopes that the war will soon stop, because the mob in 
New York and elsewhere are already feeling the pressure of 
hunger. 

May 24, 186 1. — It had kindly remarked, that though the 
Southern statesmen could not be justified by any rule of law 
in breaking up the Union, law has not been the rule commonly 
prevailing in America, but " almost unrestrictedly the rule of 
self-will." In flat contradiction to the assertion of September 25, 
just quoted, it had said on August 14, 1861, " The war is the 
" result of mob passions, and the real act of men who have 
" comparatively little interest in the maintenance of union, order, 
" national credit, or property itself." 

The two lines are ingeniously combined in one article by 
artifice of which the Times is specially fond. 

" Far be it from us," it says (October 18, 1861), "to dogma- 
" tize about democracy, or to attribute the civil war to 
" republican institutions. The secession of the South is certainly 
" not a necessary result of any form of government. Yet 
"it is not too much to say that the form which democracy 
" has taken for the last thirty years, or since the Presidency 
" of Jackson, was likely to lead to such a result." In other 
words, we won't distinctly say it, but we will hint it. It is 
common for Protestant advocates to disclaim any wish to 
impute deliberate lying to Roman Catholics ; but, they 



The True Cause of the War. 



37 



insinuate, if Roman Catholics did wish for an excuse, they 
might know where to find it. 

It appears, I think, pretty plainly that the Times was in the 
position described by Mr. Tennyson, " sitting apart, holding no 
form of creed, but contemplating all," and, indeed, trying on 
each in turn. It did not really think that democracy was the 
cause of the war, but it could not help saying stinging things 
about democrats j it could not doubt that slavery had really 
something to do with it, but it tried by every means to evade 
the inevitable conclusion. Slavery was an awkward topic, and 
it went so far as it dared, which sometimes was very far indeed, 
in denying it to be involved in the quarrel. 

VI. — The " Times " on the Slavery Question. 

I will now trace shortly the treatment applied by the Times to 
the successive phases of the slavery question. It will appear, I 
think, that it did not escape the nemesis common to all apologists 
for slavery. The Southern Confederacy fell because, in the words 
of its Vice-President, it was grounded upon the cornerstone of 
slavery. Their advocates have confuted themselves over and 
over again by the strange contortions of argument forced upon 
them by the necessity of concealing this part of their client's case. 
They were constantly impaled upon the horn of a dilemma ; they 
were bound to maintain either that slavery was a good thing, and 
that the South were righting for it; or that slavery was a bad thing, 
and the Southern cause had nothing to do with it. The first 
assertion shocked the consciences of Englishmen, and the second 
their common-sense. As the war proceeded, each proposition 
became more untenable. By degrees, the change of opinion, 
which had been predicted by all impartial observers, developed 
itself. The temporizing and half-hearted dropped out, and the 
lead gradually fell into the hands of the extreme of each party. 
The Times, indeed, admitted, as I have remarked, that abolition 



38 



The " Times " on the A mcrican War. 



might be adopted as a war measure ; and, after the event, it 
observed upon the transference of power to the most thorough- 
going partisans as a process naturally to be expected. But, as a 
rule, the Times showed its perception by asserting that the 
reverse of this process was taking place. 

Thus (Dec. 14, 1861), it observes, in answer to Mr. Sumner, 
that the commercial classes in America depend upon slavery for 
cotton, sugar, and tobacco, and are, therefore, interested in 
maintaining it. Any opposition to slavery would divide the 
North into two parts — a good specimen of the method of 
reasoning from a priori considerations. 

July 28, 1862. — It observes that, "So soon as it becomes 
(< evident that the South cannot be retained as a slave-owning 
" portion of the Union, New York must naturally be against any 
" further prosecution of the war— as also will be Massachusetts 
u and Pennsylvania. ... If Pennsylvania cannot sell her 
" manufactures to the South, and New York cannot be the 
" banker and broker of the planters " (which would, it supposes, 
follow from abolition), " their interest in the Union is gone. 
u This accounts for the decay of the Union feeling in the Atlantic 
" cities;" And it frequently propounded a theory stated as 
follows (Feb. 16, 1863)* One consequence of the emancipation 
policy is becoming evident " The war, instead of crushing down 
" the revolt of the South, has produced a movement for secession 
" within what remained of the Union; Political opinion in the 
" North-Western States is ripening to revolt." 

I may therefore assume it to be the settled conviction of the 
Times (that is, an opinion which it does not flatly contradict 
oftener than three or four times), that emancipation policy, 
instead of being that to which the North would inevitably become 
reconciled, was likely to be the source of further schisms. But 
the Times was not contented with proving that the policy of 
emancipation was disintegrating the remnant of the Union j it 



The Slavery Question. 



39 



insisted upon also proving at intervals that it was a perfectly 
nugatory pretext, and in process of abandonment by its authors. 
It was, doubtless, so anxious to get this awkward topic well 
buried, that it almost believed in the fulfilment of its wishes. 
Thus (September 9, 1861), it asserted, as I have remarked, that it 
would be proved to demonstration that slavery had gone out 
of sight. 

April 3, 1863. — "Wholesale emancipation has ceased to rally 
the Republicans themselves." In place of it, a more genuine 
sentiment is appealed to ; "a demand for the Union at any price, 
" whatever the effect on slavery. It is thus that we interpret the 
" spread of Union Leagues. Abolition is to be excluded from their 
" platform, because it has been tried as a political engine and 
" found wanting." " The proclamation will be virtually repu- 
" diated just as it has begun to bear its fatal fruits." 

Nov. 14, 1863. — " The tenor of Lincoln's proclamation has 
" been well understood by the coloured people. There is no 
" disposition to desert the cause of the whites, and, furthermore, 
" the idea of conquering the South by means of negro troops has 
" been utterly abandoned." 

Sept. 19, 1864.-— It assures us, in an article to which I shall 
refer presently, 'that slavery is " no longer a point at issue, and 
will not be interfered with, after peace is restored." 

The Times being thus eager to prove that emancipation was a 
policy which could not unite the North, and which was always 
being abandoned, though it persisted in always returning to life, it 
is curious to ask what it supposed to be the probable effect of the 
war upon slavery. I will quote a few passages to prove how plainly 
it had realized the bearings of this complicated question : — 

May 9, 1862. — "The Union is impossible except upon the 
" basis of slavery ; division is incompatible with the permanent 
" existence of slavery." 
Or, as it still more emphatically asserted— « 



40 



The "Times" on the American War. 



October 7, 1862. — "We are in Europe thoroughly convinced 
" that the death of slavery must follow as necessarily upon the 
" success of the Confederates in this war as the dispersion of 
" darkness upon the rising sun." 

March 26, 1863. — Appeared an elaborate article, in which it is 
proved that, if the war fails, the South will become a great slave 
empire. " No doubt it would carry the institution of slavery into 
" all its new territory, whether conquered or annexed, whether on 
" the mainland or on the isles of the sea." 

To explain this startling contradiction in terms of all that it 
had been hitherto saying, I must remark that the success of the 
South about this time had emboldened the Times to plant itself 
upon the more dangerous horn of the dilemma I have mentioned, 
and to declare that the South was fighting -for slavery and that 
slavery was a good thing. "The race," it said, "vegetates 
" in Africa, it rises to something better in the Southern 
" States of America, it languishes in the Northern States, it has 
" died out in this country." Though it may not be well off any- 
where, it is at its best in the South. 

Dec. 18, 1863. — It is remarked that " if the Southern resistance 
is finally subdued, the institution will probably cease to exist." 

Let me sum up these opinions. The Times " demonstrated," 
in September 1861, in a passage already quoted, that slavery had 
gone out of sight already, and was in no way affected by the 
war. In the first two passages quoted above it asserts that 
slavery will be destroyed if the North fail, and preserved if they 
succeed. In the last two it asserts that slavery will be preserved 
if the North fails and destroyed if they succeed. One other 
variation of opinion is possible, namely — that slavery will perish 
in any case. This view was elaborately maintained in an article 
of March 24, 1864. " It is very remarkable," it naively observes, 
" that the most conspicuous result of the American war is the 
" gradual elevation of the black race in social and political 



The Slavery Question. 



4i 



" position. As happens in all political revolutions, the most 
" thoroughgoing party has proved the most enduring, and that 
" party is the Abolitionist." If the restoration of the Union is 
hopeless, the destruction of slavery is not so. " It was pointed 
" out, indeed, at a very early period of the war, that slavery 
a could hardly escape from the double danger by which it was 
" threatened. If the North were victorious they could do what 
" they chose." (This, as it carefully explained, April 26, 1862, 
must be either the extirpation or expulsion of the blacks.) 
" If the South, they would be surrounded by free soil " (but, as 
shown, March 26, 1863, a slave power including " the Isles of 
the Sea ") ; and it proceeds to argue that the South will, by arming 
the slaves, obtain a numerical majority for the first time in the 
war. Perhaps the most direct contradiction to this article is the 
one of April 26, 1862, just quoted, where it is explained that the 
best chance for the negro is for the South to succeed, in which 
case the negroes will remain slaves as before. The same land 
will not hold the emancipated black and the slaveholding white. 
" The blacks must be re-enslaved, must be exterminated, or must 
" be re-expelled." Should the North conquer, the question will 
be between the last two alternatives. 

VII.--The " Times " on Emancipation Measures. 

I will -conclude the subject of slavery by showing the nature of 
the criticism applied by the Times to the most prominent of the 
successive measures which marked the gradual adoption of an 
anti-slavery policy. Although the accumulated effect of those 
measures was too conspicuous to be evaded, it was just possible 
to misrepresent each taken separately. As we shall presently see 
that, according to the Times, the greatest military successes of the 
North were obtained by an unbroken series of defeats, it will appear 
that the old stronghold of slavery was stormed in a series of 
assaults, each of which was a dishonest feint or a step backwards. 



42 



The "Times" on the American War. 



In the beginning of 1862, Mr. Lincoln brought forward a plan 
for assisting any State to emancipate its slaves. He proposed 
that Congress should help in compensating the owners. If, he 
said, " the border States accepted this plan, slavery would be 
doomed, and the cause of the war removed." 

The Times argued (March 24, 1862) that the plan was absurd. 
Slavery, it said, was still kept up in the district of Columbia, 
Maryland, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. (I 
have not been fortunate enough to find any recognition in the 
Times of the subsequent abolition of slavery in four of the five States 
named.) Hence, by some process of logic which is far beyond 
me, it inferred that " Mr. Lincoln has begun to entertain the idea 
" so firmly entertained by every European politician that the only 
" possible solution of the struggle is entire separation between 
" North and South." I cannot, I say, follow the argument, but 
I am not surprised that the Times pronounces the scheme to be 
totally unintelligible. 

It soon became evident that the scheme was not to be carried 
out. The Times then said (August 8, 1862) that Mr. Lincoln 
had wished to convert the border States into free-soil States, 
"well knowing and indeed avowing that the result of such a 
" revolution would be their final detachment from the side of the 
u South. The proposal itself was discreetly framed ; . . 4 
" by such a decision the border States would have committed 
" themselves to the principle of abolition, and have broken with 
" slavery and the South once for all," 

The Times characteristically shrank from admitting to itself the 
obvious nature of the proposal until the discovery that it was not 
to be practically tested, 

In October, 1862, Mr. Lincoln announced that he should 
issue his emancipation proclamation in the beginning of 1863; 
He recommended at the sariie time to Congress a scheme for 
the compensation of loyal dwners; As this great measure was 



Emancipation Measures. 



43 



perhaps the most important step, and the crowning glory of 
Mr. Lincoln's life, I will venture to recall to notice one or two 
obvious facts which the Times systematically disregarded. The 
Northern generals had in the first instance so scrupulously 
abstained from interference with slavery, that they even restored 
slaves to rebel owners. General Butler hit upon the happy legal 
discovery that these slaves were " contraband of war ; " whence 
arose the slang term of " contrabands " as applied to negroes. 
Now President Lincoln's proclamation was an extensive applica- 
tion of General Butler's argument. Its constitutionality may be 
disputed, but its justification was based simply upon the right of 
a commander-in-chief to appropriate the property of belligerents 
opposed to him. The very arguments, therefore, by which it was 
justified proved it to be inapplicable to the loyal States. Mr. 
Lincoln had no shadow of legal claim to emancipate their slaves 
any more than to seize their cattle, and he never in any instance 
put forward such a claim. As, at the same time, the emancipation 
of slaves in the planting States rendered slavery in the border 
States insecure, some measure for securing compensation to loyal 
owners, or to those who might submit before the proclamation came 
into action, was a natural complement to the proclamation. As a 
military measure, the proclamation struck at the weakest point of 
the enemy. The policy which it officially sanctioned was, in 
fact, forced upon the North by the logic of events. Wherever 
the Northern armies went, they freed the slaves at the cannon's 
mouth, and the proclamation confirmed and accepted the result; 
It acted like an acid, softening the hard shell of Southern society^ 
enabling the bayonet to penetrate. Southern society was, for the 
time, disorganized, to be reconstituted on a different basis. In 
the fact of that reconstitution lay the moral justification of the 
Northern enterprise, for it permitted the hope that the success 
won by arms might be consolidated by removing the very cause 
of irritation. The Northern armies administered a medicine 



44 The " Times " //^ merican War. 



potent enough, not merely to remove the symptoms, but to renew 
the constitution of the patient. But did not the proclamation 
incite to a servile war % In one sense it did, and in that sense 
a servile war is the holiest of all wars. If a man may not fight to 
raise himself from the level of a beast of burden to that of a man, 
it is hard to say for what cause he may fight. How is a man 
ever to be justified for shooting his fellow-men, if he may not 
shoot them when they have prevented him from marrying, from 
being educated, from receiving the wages of labour, and from all 
the rights of property? But, it is said, a servile war often leads 
to frightful atrocities. The brutified man takes the vengeance of 
a brute upon those who have degraded him. Massacres and 
outrages will follow the rebound from a fearful wrong ; and holy 
as the cause may be, it may be accompanied by horrors so great 
as to quench our sympathy and to make us think the liberty of a 
race too dearly bought by such sufferings of one generation. 

If, then, the war can be so organized as to be freed from these 
stains, if slaves fighting for freedom commit no more outrages 
than men fighting for commerce or for a diplomatic point of 
honour, they have the most imperative of all claims upon our 
sympathy. Before we refuse it, we should be certain that the 
horrors incidentally resulting will more than outweigh the blessings. 
But it is an admirable topic for thoughtless abuse to charge upon 
the abettors of a servile war all the atrocities that we instinctively 
associate with the name. It is easy to slur over the fact that 
such atrocities have not, in fact, occurred, and were not invited or 
provoked. Now, the warfare sanctioned by the proclamation 
was, I may unhesitatingly say, obnoxious to no such objections. 
Even their enemies have not attributed any special brutalities to 
the negro troops. They were less inclined to breaches of dis- 
cipline than their white comrades. Nor, again, was the procla- 
mation at any time intended to provoke a servile warfare of the 
atrocious kind ; for the policy adopted simultaneously was, not to 



Emancipation Measures. 



y 

45 



endeavour to raise the blacks in distant plantations, but, to form 
brigades of fugitive slaves on territory belonging to the Union. 
Neither was there any probability that the proclamation would 
unintentionally lead to sporadic insurrections in the South. For, 
besides that the proclamation could scarcely reach the remote 
plantations, it would be manifestly far more natural for a discon- 
tented negro to run off to a place where he could obtain arms and 
be effectually drilled, than to rise " promiscuously " in the midst 
of a population armed to the teeth. The proclamation tended to 
discourage such risings by promising a safe asylum for fugitives. 
The evident purpose of the proclamation, confirmed by all we 
know of the circumstances under which it was issued, of its plain 
meaning, and of the means by which it was carried out, was 
simply to give a legal sanction to a policy enforced by military, 
moral, and political considerations. Experience has confirmed 
this view, and it is, even at the present moment, the charter under 
which the negroes of the Southern States claim a right to freedom. 

I will quote a few passages to show how the Times treated the 
measure to which, more than any other, is owing the most 
remarkable social revolution of our time. 

Oct. 7, 1862. — Lincoln has declared that after January 1, 
1863, "neither he nor his army will do anything to suppress any 
" efforts which the negroes of the Southern States may make for 
" the recovery of their freedom. This means, of course, that 
" Mr. Lincoln will, on the 1st of January next, do his best to 
il excite a servile war in the States which he cannot occupy with 
il his armies. . . . He will seek out the places which are left 
" but slightly guarded, and where the women and children have 
" been trusted to the fidelity of coloured domestics. He will 
" appeal to the black blood of the xAirican. He will whisper of 
" the pleasures of slaughter, and the gratification of yet fiercer 
" instincts, and when blood begins to flow and shrieks come 
" piercing through the darkness, Mr. Lincoln will wait till the 



V 

46 The " Times " on the A merican War. 



" rising flames tell that all is consummated, and then he will rub 
" his hands and think that revenge is sweet." . . . " The 
" South will answer with a hiss of scorn." New York 
and Pennsylvania will become disloyal if • slavery goes. " If 
" Lincoln wants such a conquest as this, the North is perhaps 
" yet strong enough to conquer Hayti." It is a mere proof of 
li impotent malignity," although there may be some " partial 
" risings; for if any power publish an exhortation to the labouring 
" classes of a community to plunder and murder, it will meet 
£< with some response." 

Oct. 14. — The proclamation is an incitement to assassination, 
" In truth, it is nothing else, and can mean nothing else." 

Oct. 21. — After some facetiousness about " Lincoln the Last," 
after pointing out that though " Honest Abe " had been honest 
to his party, he had been dishonest to his country, and 
how honesty in this sense (perhaps in some others) was an in- 
tolerable evil and a sufficient provocation to secession, and inferring 
" how insupportable must be despotism of which a man of this calibre 
" is despot," it inquires, " Is Lincoln yet a name not known to us 
" as it will be known to posterity 1 Is it ultimately to be classed 
" among the catalogue of monsters, wholesale assassins, and 
" butchers of their kind?" The Times thus charged Mr. Lincoln, 
in bombast worthy of the Family Herald, with all sorts of 
atrocities. There was, however, a fear that some weak haters of 
slavery on this side of the Atlantic might be attracted by the 
name of emancipation, and, indeed, a crowded meeting was held 
in Exeter Hall, and the sympathies of the English anti-slavery 
party were manifestly afflicted. 

The Northern cause was so distinctly identifying itself with 
the profession of anti-slavery opinions that the Times could only 
take one of two courses. Either it might deny that slavery was 
an evil, or it might assert that the North was merely hypocritical 
in its assault. As usual, it did both. The first course required 



Emancipation Measures. 



47 



some courage. It made a bold stroke on January 6, 1863, 
in answer to some of the American Abolitionists. "They preach," 
says the Times, " with the Bible in their hands. In that book 
" there is not one single text that can be perverted to prove 
" that slavery is unlawful, though there is much which naturally 
" tends to its mitigation, its elevation, and its final extinction." 
It then repeats the common special pleading as to St. Paul's 
Epistle to Philemon. " The only possible doubt about the exact 
" meaning of his advice is whether slaves are to refuse their 
" liberty even if it be offered, or whether they are merely to 
" remain true to their masters even if chance presents oppor- 
il tunity of escape. . . . If it be said that slavery is at 
" variance with the spirit of the Gospel, so are a good many 
" things which are not yet laid under a ban of abolition or 
M threatened with the war-power," e.g. purple and fine linen and 
good clerical incomes. 

This article marks, I believe, the point at which the Times 
culminated. The amount of its anti-slavery sentiments at a 
given time is determined by the variations in the Northern tide 
of success. This was just after the battle of Fredericksburg. 
This defence of slavery — or attack upon biblical morality — was, 
however, a little too much for the British public, and the Times 
retired towards its former position, that slavery was " in truth a 
hateful and horrible thing," though it still vigorously denounced 
emancipation. The palpable failure of this policy — for the article 
produced a general cry of disgust — led it to take the safer line of 
declaring that the North was not in earnest. 

The Times therefore asserted (January 19, 1863) that the whole 
affair was a piece of hypocrisy intended for foreign consumption. 
" All the actors," it said, " are anxious to tell each other that this 
" proclamation is Buncombe," specially Lincoln, but " no one in 
" England imagines that the President .... desires emanci- 



48 The "Times" on the American War. 



" pation for itself." (No human being would now dare to doubt 
it.) The Times speaks of itself as hating slavery, but being 
" unmoved by all the stage-tricks of Mr. Lincoln and his friends." 
" Mr. Bright is not such a simpleton as to believe in the 
" benevolent intentions of Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Adams must have 
" laughed heartily with himself at the few woodcocks who have 
" been caught in his springes." This last polished sarcasm 
refers to an address from the Anti-Slavery Society, congratulating 
Mr. Adams on the proclamation. 

Feb. 6, 1863. — "Of all the hypocrisies," it says, "which have 
" scandalized the world within our memory, the pretext that this 
" war is being carried on for the benefit of the negro " (no one 
asserted that it was carried on primarily for his benefit) "is the 
" greatest. It is a gross palpable imposture." An army of 
150,000 negroes having been mentioned : " We all know what 
" that means ; it means 10,000 domestic tragedies, and a political 
" sham which seeks to perpetrate a hideous crime." 

Feb. 19. — The Anti-Slavery Society is compared to a society 
for the abolition of captivity in the Zoological Gardens ; and, 
continuing in this vein of metaphor, their leaders are said to be 
small dogs barking in the dens of the old lions Wilberforce and 
Clarkson. This will probably be a sufficient specimen of the 
Times' abuse. I will notice one or two palpable misrepresenta- 
tions of a similar class. 

Oct 7, 1862. — " Where he has no power," says the Times, 
" Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free ; where he retains power, 
" he will consider them to be slaves." 

I need not enlarge upon the absurdity of this constantly 
repeated statement. It depends upon a blundering notion that 
Mr. Lincoln had claimed power to abolish slavery or to free 
slaves on other than military grounds. In direct contradiction to 
the Times, it may be said that Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves where 



Emancipa Hon M east ires. 



49 



he had the legal power, and, of course, did not free them where 
he had not. But the Times systematically refused to see this. 

Dec. 17. — It is amazed at a man, as autocratic as " the 
Czar," talking about Constitutional amendments. " The scheme," 
it says, li is very unlike the proclamation of three months since. 
It is a laboured substitute for the edict of September last." The 
fact is that it was a natural corollary, as I have shown. 

Dec. 29, 1862. — It asserts that the Northern Government is 
inconsistent, because, while seeking to identify the North in the 
eyes of foreign Powers with the cause of emancipation, it offered 
" the retention of their slaves as a premium to loyal slave- 
" holders." That is, it did not attempt forcibly, and in defiance 
of all law and policy, to deprive them of their slaves, without 
offering compensation. To twist the non-infliction of a severe 
penalty into the offer of a " premium " is an ingenious logical 
feat. But the Times capped even this blunder. 

It had been reported that Southern troops had shot certain 
negroes taken in arms. The Times (January 21, 1863) inge- 
niously remarked that Mr. Lincoln's abolition decree was 
fortunately illogical enough to give the negro security. " Under 
" the Federal flag he is a slave with all the immunities of the 
" servile condition." " If he can be held as a slave by one side, 
" and shot as a free man by the other, his position is miserable 
" indeed." There is something so muddleheaded about this, that 
I rather fear to put any interpretation upon it. It appears, how- 
ever, to be the impression of the writer that any slave freed by 
Mr. Lincoln's proclamation immediately became a slave again on 
entering the Union lines, and was probably tossed up for by the 
first white regiment he met. If the Times did not mean this, its 
remarks are sheer nonsense. If it did, they are not materially better. 

To conclude the subject of the proclamation, I will quote one 
or two further passages on its effect. I have already quoted a 
remarkable one of March 24, 1864, on the " gradual elevation of 

4 



50 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



the black race," which, however, the Times appears to think a 
mere accident. 

June 18, 1863. — It says, " We shall be surprised if the presence 
" of black regiments be not found a heavy loss to the present 
" army, and a grievous loss to the enlistment of a new one." 
Within a week (June 23, 1863), it admits that the consequences of 
the emancipation measure are becoming " important enough," the 
enlistment of negroes being in progress in Louisiana. This admis- 
sion seems to be made to prove that horrible atrocities will result. 

Certain atrocities were soon reported, but practised not by, but 
on, negro troops. Mr. Lincoln answered by a declaration that if 
the Confederates massacred black prisoners he must retaliate. 
The Times admits (August 17, 1863) that he could not do other- 
wise, but lectures him on the wickedness of the proclamation 
which made such measures necessary. Don't call in a policeman, 
or you may make the mob angry. 

It declared (I have already quoted some passages) that the 
policy was a failure, and speedily to be abandoned. (December 31, 
1863.) — It asserts that " Mr. Lincoln's proclamation has not 
" fulfilled the hopes of its authors, because it has not caused the 
" servile insurrection which was justly deprecated by its opponents' 
" policy." It admits that large numbers of slaves have been 
liberated, though, by the army, and not by the proclamation, and 
adds, " if the Southern resistance is finally subdued, the institution 
will probably cease to exist." In other words, it admits that all 
its own predictions as to the probable effect of the proclamation 
have been falsified — that no atrocities have resulted, and that 
slavery is being extinguished. As for the quibble about the 
" army," the very purpose of the proclamation was to legalize the 
action of the army. But, whilst admitting that Mr. Lincoln's 
avowed expectations have come true, and its own been falsified, 
it persists in attributing to him other intentions of secret malignity 
which have been disappointed. 



Emancipation Measures. 



5i 



The candour of this article, which is one of the annual sum 
maries of the Times, corresponds to a certain superiority in its tone. 
It soon relapsed. (January 5, 1864.) — Mr. Lincoln having stated 
that 100,000 negroes were already in the military service, the Times 
coolly assumed that not more than 100,000 had been liberated in all. 
The falsehood of this may be guessed from the fact that their 
own correspondent (January 29) tried to prove that not more 
than half a million negroes had been freed. I am not aware 
that the Times ever retracted its error, but it found a more 
convenient line of argument by asserting, not that the North had 
no negro troops, but (February 17) that their armies were entirely 
composed of negroes and foreigners. 

I will give two further illustrations of the candour of the Times 
in this matter of slavery. Society being thoroughly disorganized 
in Louisiana, General Banks put out a scheme for establishing 
temporary relations between freedmen and their former masters. 
I need not argue as to whether the scheme was carried out in good 
faith, nor whether it was to be considered as a step backwards 
towards slavery or forwards towards freedom. I will only remark 
that it clearly denned an intermediate state of things. The chief 
points in which Banks's regulations made the freedman differ 
from the slave were these : the freedmen were to have a right to 
schools, to a piece of ground for themselves, to wages at a fixed 
rate, to choose their own masters, to receive support from 
Government if incapable. They were not to be flogged, and 
could not be sold or separated from their families. No one 
regulation can be mentioned which placed them at a disadvantage 
as compared with slaves. 

The Times quietly asserts (March 3, 1864), that this scheme is 
in substance identical with slavery, and by May 1 7 maintains that 
it has restored slavery in an aggravated form. Between these two 
days (March 24) occurs its proof that the most conspicuous result 
of the war is the elevation of the black race. 

4—2 



5^ 



The " Times'' on the American War. 



By the end of 1864 it was abundantly evident that the war 
was crushing out slavery. Mr. Seward took advantage of this to 
say that slavery was no longer in question. Both Republicans 
and Democrats might, as he said, look upon abolition as an 
accomplished fact. 

The Times hereupon said (September 19, 1864), after quoting his 
assertion that slavery was no longer at issue : " The Republicans 
" have played with slavery, as they have played with other 
" questions." Lincoln thought the Abolitionists might be useful, 
and went so far as to make abolition (in his message to the 
delegates in Canada) a condition for the readmission of the 
South. (I need hardly add that he never swerved from this.) The 
Times proceeds to say that Seymour denounced him, and Seward 
has followed suit ; it denies that slavery was any longer the point 
at issue, and says that it would not be interfered with after peace 
was restored. It quotes Mr. Seward's speech in the same sense 
— (November 26). 

That is, Mr. Seward said that a stipulation for killing slavery 
was useless, because slavery, if not dead, was mortally wounded. 
The Times made him say that a stipulation was not required, 
because he did not care whether it lived or died. 

I have done with the mass of contradicting utterances 
concerning slavery. Let me draw one or two conclusions. I do 
not set this down to malice, for malice would be more consistent. 
The Times vacillates too much to obey the great commandment : 
" Tell a lie and stick to it." It rather proves, what no one 
doubts to be the case, that the Times takes in its politics as 
improvident people take in their coals, by the day, and has little 
thought either for the morrow or for the day before. Its only 
consistent effort was to avoid the unpleasant necessity of allowing 
that slavery was concerned. As it had drifted, from various 
causes, into a general attitude of hostility to the American people, 
it would not make the most obvious admissions of a Northern 



Emancipation Measures. 



53 



tendency. Yet if the Times had given the devil his due, it 
might have attacked him with more force. Its line of argument 
would have been more consistent and had more appearance of 
candour. It might have made a tolerable case out of the States' 
Rights argument, had it not been obliged always to exhibit itself 
in the attitude of one wriggling out of an awkward dilemma. A 
little honesty would have paid in the long run. The British 
public were quite prepared to hear the truth about slavery, and 
the Times would have gained in reputation from the unwonted 
credit of sticking to the truth when the truth was under a cloud. 
It ought to be honest even with a view to its reputation ; to 
quote its own courteous language, would it not be well for it to 
think sometimes what " ought" means? 

VIII.— The " Times" Correspondence. 

I have shown into what perplexity the Times was thrown by its 
constant misconception of the relations of slavery to the origin 
of the war. It would not admit that slavery was in any sense the 
cause of the war, or, I should rather say that, after its conversion 
in 1 86 1, it would only make that admission in one of its occa- 
sional paroxysms of self-contradiction — and, at the same time, it 
could allege no other cause. I shall now endeavour to point out 
how much the same error distorted its view of all subsequent 
facts. 

The Times was, I believe, more honest than most persons 
suppose, because it was more ignorant than common readers can 
easily be persuaded to believe. It is, therefore, necessary to explain, 
before proceeding further, the process by which its judgment 
on American affairs was apparently formed, as I cannot otherwise 
do justice to either its ignorance or its honesty. The Times 
began by sending out to America a gentleman for whose impar- 
tiality and powers of description every one must feel a high respect. 
During 1861, his letters, although in my opinion frequently 



54 The " Times" on the American War. 



expressing erroneous judgments, were highly graphic, interesting, 
and invariably gentlemanlike. Mr. Russell, however, left America 
in the spring of 1862, on not being permitted to accompany 
M'Clellan's peninsular expedition. Occasional letters were after- 
wards published from a Southern correspondent, of whom I shall 
only say that a little more information, with a few less senti- 
mentalities about Lee and Jackson, would have improved the 
substance of his writing, thought they might have made his 
presence less acceptable to the Southern authorities. From the 
moment at which he commenced his letters, he became (if he had 
not previously been) a thorough partizan of the Southern cause. 
The Times also employed a special correspondent during part of 
1863 and 1864. His letters were unfavourable to the North, but 
evidently candid, and, therefore, such as no Northern sympathiser 
should condemn. From the beginning of 1862 until the present 
year, the Times has maintained at New York another corre- 
spondent. It had been originally my intention to treat this gentle- 
man's letters at some length. I do not, however, think them worth 
the labour, because they are in themselves feeble, and because 
the degree to which the Times is responsible for them may be 
doubted. I will in a few words give my impression of them, 
because, as will presently appear, they had considerable influence 
upon the Times' official articles. 

I read (November 12, 1863) a letter from New York in which the 
word " heroism " caught my eye, as applied to the North. Oft 
looking more closely, I saw that in the same sentence the North 
was called " stiffnecked " and " stubborn," and that, after all, it 
only possessed an amount of consistency and unity " which really 
resembled heroism." Still I thought it scarcely possible that the 
New York correspondent should have permitted himself such a 
slip, and on looking more closely, I found that the letter came 
from the " special correspondent " above mentioned. This 
anecdote will illustrate the general tendency of these remarkable 



Correspondence. 



55 



letters. They are one long effort, lasting for three years, 
to shut his own eyes and the eyes of his countrymen to the 
existence of any heroic qualities in the people amongst whom 
he lived. It must have been an irksome task for a generous 
mind, and it is nothing short of sickening for any man of 
common feeling to read as a collected whole. We might take 
it as an agreeable bitter at intervals, but any one who follows 
my example in plodding through column after column of ceaseless 
abuse of a great nation will rise with a sense of weariness and 
disgust. Every patriotic action is explained to have really 
originated in corruption or selfishness. Scandal after scandal is 
raked together, and carefully exhibited as an average specimen of 
American affairs. If you put any faith in the writer, the whole 
political and social machinery is rotten at the core and is worked 
by the most degraded motives ; America is peopled by an 
unprincipled mob, sprinkled with charlatans and hypocrites, and 
governed by pettifogging attorneys. They hire other men to 
fight because they have no loyalty, and abandon their liberty 
because they have no courage. We all know the process by 
which such a picture may be drawn of any people. If you test 
the waters of the purest stream, you may find places where it is 
full of corruption as the Thames ; if you send out your spies to 
those social depressions into which the viler part of the popu- 
lation of any country drains, he may honestly bring back a 
report that he has seen none but blackguards. I hope^ for the 
sake of this correspondent's veracity, and I believe from internal 
evidence, that he mixed exclusively with a society justly out of 
favour with their countrymen. To New York flows a very large 
share of the foreign and disloyal element of America. Wall- 
street is not more likely to take exalted patriotic views than our" 
Stock Exchange ; to judge of the American people by the gossip 
of a clique of Southern exiles, gold speculators, and refugee 
Irishmen in New York, is as absurd as it would have been to 



The " Times " on the A mcrican War. 



judge of the French Revolution exclusively from a Royalist 
emigre, or of English politics in the last century from a clique 
of Jacobites. I have said that I do not know how far the 
Times holds itself responsible for the opinions of its corre- 
spondent. It cannot, however, evade the responsibility of 
having given to him leave to vent in its pages some five or six 
weekly columns of unmixed abuse. It may be presumed to have 
considered them at least valuable contributions to our knowledge 
of the time, and tolerably fair pictures of what was taking place. 
It thought, that is, that a portrait of America, in which every 
virtue was scrupulously omitted, was not a gross caricature. 

In a more important way these letters affected the Times — 
namely, that they were the raw material of which a large part 
of the Times' articles were manufactured, and that their state- 
ments eked out a good many hints left judiciously vague in 
the leading articles. To the popular mind the Times is hedged 
about with a certain mysterious divinity ; it is thought to be at any 
rate in possession of unusual sources of information. A weight 
is attributed to its words which we should not give to the indi- 
vidual utterances of one of its writers. A little steady reading of 
the Times will dissipate this idea. The real process is this : The 
New York correspondent hears that in some remote village some 
one has been tarred and feathered for Southern sympathies. He 
ekes out half a column by telling this story at full length, which he 
can do with the more ease as the last military news was a Northern 
success, and will bear, like the battle of Gettysburg, to be dealt 
with in a few lines. The Times writes upon this story ; or, to quit 
the abstraction for a moment, the Times' editor tells a contributor 
to send him an article upon it. As the story is not a very long one, 
and even a Times article must come to the point after a certain 
number of flourishes, the column requires to be filled out. The 
contributor, therefore, proves that the North have lost their 
liberties, and are passing through anarchy to despotism, and 



Correspondence. 



57 



expands this sentiment by the help of a few of the absurd historical 
analogies which are always kept on hand. Thus a riot, equi- 
valent perhaps to that which happened a few days ago at 
Nottingham*, is the nucleus of a formal sermon from the Times to 
prove that the American Government is in the hands of the mob. 
And most people, who have not been behind the scenes of a 
newspaper, incline to believe it, and suppose the opinion to rest 
upon profound observation of a political philosopher. The result 
is flimsy enough ; but as it is well understood that a Times article 
is subject to the careful supervision of the editor, we may assume 
that however slight the evidence may be, the editor believes 
that the North are in fact falling under despotic power with a force 
of conviction great enough to induce him to assert it in the most 
positive terms. How great that is, I can't say. It would, how- 
ever, be desirable that people should understand that, as the 
strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link, so the 
broadest assertions of the Times about America frequently mean 
no more than rumour caught up by a silly gobemouche in the 
streets of New York, 



IX. — A Military Despotism. 

The educated and intelligent men who wrote in the Times could 
not but be aware that most historical events have causes. 
Unable to assign that which first presented itself, they were 
obliged to cast about for another. The hostile attitude to the 
Northern side, into which the Times had drifted so soon as 
the Northern side became, in its opinion, hopeless, made it 
extremely unwilling to admit the most obvious truths in regard 
to slavery. It took refuge in vehement assertions that the 
difference between North and South was as profound as the 

* Since writing this I have seen this riot noticed in a French paper as a 
proof that Englishmen do not possess their boasted freedom of election. 



53 



The "Times" on tJie American War. 



difference between French and English, between Magyars and 
Germans, or between Germans and Italians; but it never con- 
descended to specify in detail the nature of this profound 
difference ; it could not, in fact, have done so without meeting 
its bugbear of slavery immediately beneath, if not actually upon, 
the surface. I have shown the prevarication and web of incessant 
self-contradiction into which the Times fell in accounting for the 
war; I have shown further that it led to a total misconception 
of the effect of the war upon slavery. I now have to show how 
the same embarrassment distorted its whole account of the 
machinery by which the war was carried on. The Times ignored 
any justification derivable from the circumstance that the aim 
and end of the struggle was the subversion of the slave power ; 
it was driven to maintain that the case might be fairly paralleled 
in gratuitous wickedness with an attempt of France to conquer 
Holland. Moreover, it was as hopeless as an attempt of England 
to conquer France. A nation could have no rational motive 
for pursuing an enterprise proved by the Times to be at once 
wicked and hopeless. Two or three explanations of the pheno- 
menon were possible. The nation might be mad, a theory 
much used by Sir A. Alison in explaining the French Revolution. 
Thus the Times (October 20, 1863) was inclined to agree with 
Bishop Berkeley that nations might go mad, like individuals, 
It was, however, too absurd for daily wear ; it occurs in a few 
isolated expressions, which probably mean nothing more than 
that men who differ from the Times should, in charity, be held 
to be mad. Again, the war might be explained if it could be 
made out that by some mysterious process every one made it pay» 
On this supposition war would be enough to account for itself, 
and the Times be relieved of the necessity of any explanation j 
Or, finally, it was conceivable that the people did not really care 
about the war, but were compelled to fight in obedience to 
some external will. This supposed the Government to be a 



M ilitary Despotism. 



59 



despotism. In short, the Americans were either mad, mercenary, 
or slaves. 

This last may be taken as the favourite theory of the Times ; 
and, as there were not wanting circumstances to give it a certain 
plausibility, I will state what I conceive to have been their real 
relation to the facts. That the development of great standing 
armies is dangerous to the liberties of a country, and that 
Republics are apt to be converted into Despotisms by successful 
military commanders, have become traditionary commonplaces. 
They have probably about as much value as such commonplaces 
usually possess, not, I should say, a very great one ; but, at any 
rate, they are frequently applied rashly and in accordance with a 
very strained and superficial analogy. In the great outburst in 
the United States, it might not unreasonably be supposed that 
constitutional changes might take place, that the distribution of 
power might be altered, and that a good deal of the old machinery 
might require repair, or give way under the strain. It is 
undeniable that in the Southern States, partially or wholly 
overrun by the Union forces, there existed for the time a military 
despotism, resting upon martial law — that is, upon the absence of 
all law— and often administered by vulgar governors, who fre- 
quently confounded brutality with energy* Again, in the Northern 
States it was an essential condition of the struggle that 
Government should be entrusted with great powers. Spies and 
sympathisers with the insurrection swarmed in the Northern 
cities. It was the boast of the South during the early part of the" 
war that the plans 1 of the Northern generals were invariably 
betrayed. In the attempted burning of Northern cities and in the 
Assassination of Mn Lincoln, we have had sufficient proof of the 
abundance of conspirators. Assuming that the war was to be 
carried orij it would have been childish to refuse the necessary 
powers to those who directed it* To relax the reins may be 
proof either that you cannot grasp them or that you are confident 



6o 



The "Times" on the American War. 



that you can at any time resume them. The Government of the 
United States are in theory the servants and the creatures of 
the people. In proportion as they are, in fact, dependent upon 
the popular will, it is safe to entrust them for an emergency with 
unrestricted authority, and when such authority has been 
committed, it is absurd to quibble about its exercise in particular 
instances. When the ship is in extreme danger, the crew cannot 
quarrel as to whether any officer has exceeded his duty. Cases 
of extreme individual hardship will in all probability occur; their 
frequent occurrence would be a proof of bad management on the 
part of the Government ; a note should be made of them for 
future redress, if immediate redress is impracticable ; but it would 
be silly to make pretexts of them for depriving the Government of 
its necessary discretionary power. 

Now the whole question about the United States is whether 
the powers exercised came under the class thus defined, or 
whether they constituted a permanent encroachment upon 
popular rights. It will be at once admitted that the Con- 
stitution has undergone whatever change is implied in the 
establishment by military force of the doctrine that the United 
States form, as Webster maintained, a nation, and not, as 
Calhoun maintained, a mere Confederacy resting on a compact. 
It may be admitted further that the central power has been 
strengthened and consolidated by the course of events. But 
we should be slow to admit, without distinct proof, that a 
nation of some twenty millions of English-speaking inhabi- 
tants, brought up beyond all nations of the world in the habit 
of settling their own affairs, and with an extraordinary aptitude 
for expressing and enforcing the will of the majority, would 
suffer this power to be snatched from their hands ; that a peopk 
with whom newspapers seem to be a spontaneous product of the 
soil of every village should allow the liberty of the press to be 
tampered with except as a figure of speech ; or that a nation 



Military Despotism, 



6r 



distinguished for its almost exaggerated tendency to local self- 
government should allow its " liberties to be lost," as a man loses 
his pocket-handkerchief in a crowd. Stump orators might declaim 
about the habeas corpus, as during our own wars Sir F. Burdett 
talked about Magna Charta, or as, before his days, John Wilkes 
made orations about the British jury. But as Englishmen knew 
in those days that claptrap about loss of liberty was nothing but 
claptrap, Americans knew in our time that Mr. Benjamin Wood 
(whom the Times persistently mistook for a statesman) was as 
arrant a demagogue as John Wilkes, and talked as great 
nonsense. They were perfectly conscious that the war continued 
because an overwhelming majority wished it to continue ; and 
that it was wiser to submit to occasional stretches of power 
than to be squabbling in the face of the enemy as to the exact 
amount of power to be doled out to their leaders ; — wiser, because 
they were also conscious that they could resume the powers they 
had bestowed. 

To quote language more forcible than my own, that namely 
of the Times itself — (Sept. 3, 1864) — " There is after all no 
" despotism possible in America, except the will of the majority." 
Lincoln and Seward only had power " because the mass of the 
" people really believed in the war and were anxious that their 
" leaders should carry things with a high hand." I may, perhaps, 
assume that if any despotism had been established, it was not, in 
September last, visible to the naked eye. 

I will now quote a few previous utterances of the Times upon 
this subject ; and I will point out the singular theory which they 
constructed. I must also quote some of the remarks of their New 
York correspondent, by which it was supplemented and enforced. 
That gentleman was, in fact, almost crazy about the loss of liberty. 
I should say, at a guess, that at least half of his whole 
correspondence was devoted to proving this loss by argument 
and illustrative stories ; and, as his friends belonged to the class 



62 



The "Times" on the American War. 



most obnoxious to the United States Government, he was never at 
a loss for legends of Fort Lafayette. Of their accuracy, I have no 
means of judging, but I should not be inclined to accept without 
examination all the scandals which a Tory in 1776 might have told 
us about Washington ; and it is conceivable that Mr. Seward 
might correct some of the anecdotes that appear in the 
Times. 

The form of this " loss of liberty " which first appeared was the 
expected advent of a Napoleon or a Cromwell. (July 24, 1861.) 
—The Times already augured that a volunteer force was becoming 
a standing army, and as such, " dangerous to liberty." 

Aug. 12, 186 1. — It announced that a military dictator was not 
improbable before twelve months were over ; the first definite 
appearance of this mythical individual. A candidate for the post 
soon appeared in the character of General M'Clellan. 

Jan. 29, 1862. — It informed us that "the clank of the sabre 
" was already heard in the halls of the Legislature." " The 
" Federals already feel the weight of an armed hand upon 
" themselves." 

M'Clellan no more attempted to supplant the President than 
the Duke of Wellington to make himself Emperor of the British 
Isles. The Times' correspondent, indeed, asserted (Oct. 7, 1862) 
that "he (M'Clellan) held the twenty millions of the North in the 
" palm of his hand," and that, " if he thought proper to depose 
" the President, or let fall some such words as ' Take that bauble 
" away/ his army would stand by him to the last man." 

M'Clellan was soon afterwards dismissed as quietly as a light- 
house-keeper. The Times was utterly amazed, and even, as it 
seems, annoyed at his forbearance. 

" While M'Clellan," it says (November 24, 1862), " is in his 
" camp with his army, surrounded by his friends, late one night a 
" missive is put into his hands from a President who seems to 
" have lost all influence, and from a Government which is 



Military Despotism, 



63 



" gradually sinking into contempt, and immediately this powerful 
" general lays down his command, sinks into a private individual," 
&c. . . . " Is it heroic patriotism or disgust, or the absence 
" of ambition, or want of pluck, or is it policy 1 " It could not be 
that the American people were not at the mercy of any military 
adventurer, for, says the Times, " M'Clellan obeys the law, and he 
" appears to be the only man in America who holds the law to be 
" of any force." 

This was a grievous disappointment. Moreover, no other 
general for a long time acquired a sufficiently prominent position 
to do the Napoleon trick. Even Grant, as we shall find out, 
was beaten in almost every battle down to a certain day in the 
spring of 1865. The Times, however, was convinced that the 
place was ready : the man was all that was wanting. One or 
two quotations will be sufficient from a multitude. 

" Every republican form of government," as it asserted (Feb. 2, 
1863), with a characteristic affectation of philosophy, "wherever 
" found, has either gradually ripened and consolidated into a 
" constitutional monarchy, or, which is the commoner result, 
" violently merged into absolutism. There is nothing peculiar 
M to America to arrest the milder process, except a headlong leap 
il into the worse." 

March 19, 1863. — In another pseudo-philosophical argument 
it asserts, after a deal of fine writing, that the Government at 
Washington are now labouring " not to restore the Union " 
(they might as well restore the Heptarchy), " but to reconquer 
" what is lost, and let the worst come to the worst, to esta- 
" blish a military power," or, as its correspondent assured it 
(April 10, 1863) — for his piercing gaze was always discovering 
things not yet revealed to the Americans themselves — there are 
" many symptoms that this military dictatorship is not so remote a 
" contingency as an easy public supposes. . . . The military 
" machine is already constructed ; it only waits for the hardy 



64 The " Times " on the A merican War. 



"engineer; the liberty of Federal America will be a tale that 
" is told." 

By May 27 the despotism was in existence, for " should peace 
" be established," we are told, " the question would remain to be 
" tried whether the Government of the United States should 
" permanently become, what it undoubtedly now is, a military 
" despotism," America being, it appears, " about to offer the 
" last vestige of her liberties at the shrine of that Moloch of 
"slaughter and devastation" (a playful term for Mr. Lincoln), 
" which they have set up to reign over them." 

The same gentleman had perhaps put this in the pithiest form 
(Sept. 22, 1862) : "Were there half a Cromwell or a quarter 
" of a Bonaparte, this overthrow " (of the Government) " would 
" be the easy result of a coup d'etat.' 1 

It is curious after this to find the Times saying, in the autumn 
of 1864, that a despotism is impossible in America. It still, how- 
ever, clung to the idea. The Southern correspondent furnished 
us with a sketch of Sherman's character for the express reason 
that he was not unlikely to become the Cromwell of the future. 

When Mr. Lincoln died, the Times expressed a hope that 
Mr. Johnson might in some way be induced to resign. " The 
influences," it said (April 19), " by which he is surrounded cannot 
" be favourable to his retention of office. Grant and Sherman are 
" both in or near Washington," and neither they nor Stanton 
can wish to see their labours thrown away. 

This hint was thrown away. Sherman, having exceeded his 
orders, instantly obeyed, as he could not but obey, the authority 
of the President, and General Grant has shown no more signs of 
being a Cromwell than did M'Clellan. In short, strongly as the 
Times seems to have expected, and even desired, the advent of a 
military dictator, the military dictator never made his appearance. 

The despotism, however, against which the Times most steadily 
inveighed was that of Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet. I could 



Military Despotism, 



65 



not, without doubling the size of this pamphlet, give any 
adequate impression of the virulence, persistence, and energy 
with which it repeated the assertion that Lincoln was a despot. 
It seemed to cling to this as the one possible explanation of the 
war. I will quote a few specimens, but they no more give an 
idea of the whole than a bucketful of water gives an idea of a 
lake. Incessant allusions to the loss of liberty fill up all the 
spaces — often large enough — between their arguments, and show, 
if my views are just, the curious distortion of their opinions. 
They mistook a temporary and collateral effect of the war for 
a real cause ; and because the North entrusted full powers to 
their servants, fancied that the servants were the masters, and 
a slavish compliance with their wishes the real incitement of 
the war. 

Sept. 12, 1 86 1. — The Times "says nothing" of the sacrifice of 
free institutions, the surrender of individual liberty, the establish- 
ment of the futile precautions of a despotism, the abolition of the 
habeas corpus, the suppression of papers, the imprisonment of ladies, 
and certainly nothing of gentlemen being ridden out of town on 
a rail. 

Sept. 6, 1862.—" Is a nation wise which embraces ruin and 
" slaughter for the present in order to consolidate a government of 
" terror and repression for the future % Domiciliary visits and 
" midnight arrests, without crime and without an accuser, are 
" present to every one's mind." 

Sept. 16. — " There is not one-tenth part of the liberty of 
" opinion and discussion in America which exists in Republican 
" France." 

Oct. 28. — " To be suspect of being suspect is good cause for 

" incarceration in North America. . . If the Republicans win 

" (the elections), the war will go on for some time longer under 

" the protection of a reign of terror." 

They entertain some hopes, however, for (November 8, 1862) 

5 



66 The " Times " on the A merican War. 



they cannot but expect a democratic victory, as " a brilliant 
" despotism may blind a nation for a time, but a Government 
" that is at once stupid and tyrannical cannot long avert its own 
" overthrow." 

June 1 8, 1863. — The conscription was the one thing wanting to 
make the Government a centralized military despotism. " The 
" State organization will be dissolved. The Federal organization 
" of the Republic will be destroyed. Bare and naked force will 
" be set up as the only title to obedience and the only symbol of 
ft command." 

Aug. 3. — Absolute power is probable. The issue (as be- 
tween the Government and Vallandigham) is an issue between 
liberty and despotism. "Whatever the President wills is law." 
" The interests of the North are almost identical with those of the 
" South " both are in danger of subjugation at the hands of a 
" third power," — namely, the Federal Government. 

Aug. 28. — The Constitution is being " rapidly moulded into 
" a form which will make them in practice the greatest military 
tl despotism that the w r orld has ever seen." 

Nov. 28. — The main object of thanksgiving (Mr. Lincoln having 
absurdly supposed that the victories of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and 
others, in the summer of 1863, deserved thanksgiving) should be 
that, in such hands as Lincoln's, the State has hitherto escaped 
total destruction. " Personal liberty is gone ; the Government 
i: rules by virtue of the army, which, unable to conquer the 
" South, has an easy triumph over the laws and liberties of the 
" North. We admit the Government to be, for the moment, 
" strong, but refuse to believe that its strength is the result of that 
" individual freedom which it has been its principal occupation to 
" destroy." 

May 11, 1864. — "The only freemen now are those that fight in 
the war, or make their fortunes out of it." 

No%\ 16. — Martial law has been declared wherever there is 



Military Despotism. 



6 7 



a force sufficient to control the elections. " Every scholar has 
" wondered at the fatal rapidity with which the Roman Republic 
" ripened or rotted into an empire ; but this is, in sober fact, the 
" process we now see across the Atlantic." 

Nov. 22. — "We can regard his (Lincoln's) reappointment as 
" little less than the abdication by the American people of the 
" right of self-government, as an avowed step towards the founda- 
" tion of a military despotism ; towards the suppression of a 
" popular Government which may still exist in form, but which, in 
" substance, has gone. Future historians will probably date from 
" the second presidency of Mr. Lincoln, the period when the 
" American Constitution was thoroughly abrogated, and had 
" entered on that transition state, well known to the students of 
" history, through which republics pass on their way from demo- 
" cracy to tyranny." 

Feb. 28, 1865. — " Republican institutions are rapidly becoming 
imperial in almost all but the name." 

If any reliance can be placed upon the Times, a consolidated 
military depotism now exists, and has for some time existed, in 
America. It has indeed this strange peculiarity, that, except in 
the suspension of the habeas corpus and the various arbitrary 
imprisonments which have been the consequence, it has com- 
mitted no overt acts. The Constitutions of the several States 
remain in force, and are daily working much as before ; the 
Constitution of the United States is unaltered, except by an 
impending amendment for the abolition of slavery. It is true, 
as I have before remarked, that one theory of the relations of 
the Central to the State Powers has been set up by force of 
arms ■ but it is a theory held at all times by many of the best 
American statesmen, and in no way incompatible with liberty. 
If the foul demon of despotism has indeed entered into the 
body of a free people, it must be admitted that that body, to 
external observation, moves about and has its being very much 

5- 2 



68 The " Times" on the American War. 



as it had of old. Surely it is incumbent upon those who make 
such reckless assertions to adduce some proof of their accuracy, 
to point to some undeniable symptoms of the terrible disease 
which is secretly corrupting the Constitution. The line between 
liberty and despotism is not, as Englishmen ought to know, so 
fine and impalpable that it requires wire-drawn argumentation 
and delicate analytical processes to discover whether a country is 
free or enslaved. When Cromwell or Napoleon had seized the 
supreme authority it was felt, and heard, and seen ; there was no 
room for doubt upon the subject ; there was no doubt about it, I 
may add, when Butler governed New Orleans. At every turn 
you were met by the unmistakable strong arm of military force 
It wants no more argument to prove that a negro is a slave than 
that he has woolly hair and blubber lips. Now the North are 
conscious that they are free, and that the war was carried on 
because and so long as they chose that it should be carried on. 
The small minority who objected had necessarily to suffer the 
unpleasant fate of seeing their country fighting in what they 
believed to be a wrong and foolish quarrel. Individuals might 
for the time suffer from the authority necessarily entrusted to 
rulers, and, doubtless, often foolishly exercised ; but, now that 
the war is over, even the Times will hardly dare to assert that the 
North are not a free people. Indeed, the shallowness of its 
conviction to the contrary is strikingly proved by the passage I 
have quoted from September 3, 1864, that "there is no despotism 
possible in America." Had the despotism existed except as a 
mere figment of its imagination preserved in fictitious vitality 
as a useful taunt, such an assertion at such a time would have 
been impossible ; it would have been as hard as for a doctor to 
assert that a patient in the last stage of a consumption, when he 
had been for many months under his treatment, had perfectly 
sound lungs, so sound as to be incapable of disease. If the 
burden of proof were thrown upon me, I could point to the 



Military Despotism. 



6 9 



disbandment of armies as unlike a military despotism — to the 
immediate and almost precipitate effort at " reconstruction " as 
hardly like a complete oblivion of popular government ; I might 
point to a free press, which, even during the heat of the war, when 
the administration was strongest, incessantly attacked it with a 
bitterness rivalling the bitterness of the Times, and which would 
have been permitted in no country on the continent of Europe ; 
and to the constant discussion and decision of every political 
principle by the people in every corner of the land. But I 
don't wish to spend time upon proving that the sun shines ; I 
must endeavour to show how the Times endeavoured to make 
out that all the external appearances of self-government were 
in reality delusive ; that whilst the patient seemed to be walking 
and talking as freely as a man well could who had so tremendous 
a task to perform, he was really gagged and tied hand and foot. 

If a despotism "in any other sense," as the Times says, " than 
a despotism of the majority," should ever be forced upon 
America, it would have two tasks to perform. It would have 
to corrupt the elections, and it would have to support itself by an 
army alien in sympathy from the people. Under these conditions 
a Government might be set up which did not fairly represent 
the popular will, and might be maintained in defiance of it. 

The Times made, as I will now show, an attempt to prove that 
each of these methods had been adopted. 

X. — The Instruments of Despotism. 

Although, as I have said, the Times occasionally threw out 
hints, rather than positive assertions, that the elections were 
fictitious and enforced under military error, this opinion was so 
slightly founded on fact (I speak, of course, of the Northern 
States) as to be generally left to the New York correspondent. 
His occasional statements, coinciding with general declamations 
in the Times leaders about "military despotism," tended to com- 



70 



The " Times " on the A mvrieau War. 



plete the picture; but I do not find that the Times often gave 
them the weight of its own authority. I will give a couple of 
instances. The elections in the autumn of 1863 were of con- 
siderable interest, and gave large majorities to the Republicans. 
Vallandigham was the candidate for Governor in Ohio. 

March 11, 1863.— The correspondent asserted that the Repub- 
lican party, "always a minority and now desperate, were endea- 
vouring to subjugate their own countrymen. The Conscription 
Act was intended to supply a force to hold down the States 
during the approaching election for the Presidency. The con- 
scripts of each State will be sent to do duty in States with the 
people of which they have no sympathy. (October 13.) — He 
announced that Vallandigham' s election was to be prevented, 
if necessary, by getting up disturbances and then proclaiming 
martial law. 

I need not say that martial law was not declared nor Vallan- 
digham elected. At this time the " special correspondent," whom 
I have already mentioned, was in the United States and present at 
Cincinnati. Although unfriendly on the whole to the Northern 
cause, he says positively (October 31) there were but a dozen or a 
score of policemen at each polling-place. The public authorities 
nowhere interfered. " I saw soldiers nowhere, Irish bullies 
" nowhere, nowhere an attempt — I will not say to force— but 
" even to solicit a vote." 

Meanwhile, the New York correspondent was writing (Oct. 30) 
vague assertions about greenbacks, and the threats of provost- 
marshals. It was well that this time he had a brother corre- 
spondent actually on the spot to contradict him flatly. 

The most important election was that at which Mr. Lincoln was 
elected for the second time. The Times asserted (November 16, 
1864), that martial law had been proclaimed wherever there was a 
force sufficient to control the elections. After the elections — that 
is, after receiving the news of the election— the Times never ven- 



The Instruments of Despotism. yi 

tured for a moment to repeat this assertion. Indeed, it is expressly 
admitted (December 31, 1864), that Mr. Lincoln was the bond fide 
choice of the nation. 

One curious circumstance about the election was, that the New 
York correspondent made an apology for a misstatement, the 
only instance that I have found of his so doing, and confessed 
unreservedly (January 9, 1865) that he had been mistaken in 
asserting that General Dix had ordered military occupation of 
polling-places on the frontier. The fact was, as he admitted, 
that General Dix had occupied certain posts to guard against 
raids from Canada, but had withdrawn the forces before the day 
of the election. One more remark may be added on this subject. 
The Times had, for a long time, looked upon the Chicago 
platform, that upon which General M'Clellan was nominated, as a 
proof of a return of Americans to reasonable — that is, to peace- 
principles. So strongly did it hold this, that it (September 14, 
1864) compared some of Sherman's battles near Atlanta to the 
Battle of Toulouse, fought after peace was declared — -a blunder 
into which it was, as usual, led by the confident assertions of 
its correspondent. The Democrats, whose principles were repre- 
sented on that platform, were a minority of the whole nation. 
Now (September 26, 1864) the Times confessed that this platform 
was a complete failure, because it was an attempt to combine war 
and peace Democrats j that is, the majority even of the Demo- 
cratic party were in favour of war, though of a war carried on 
upon different principles. As the Republicans were unanimously 
in favouf of war> it follows that an overwhelming majority of the 
whole American people were, on the showing of the Times itself, 
in favour of continuing the war so late as the autumn of 1864. 
Hence the hypothesis that the war was the act of the Government, 
or, as the New York correspondent says, of a desperate minority 
forcing it upon their countrymen, becomes absurd. No one will 
probably, now deny that the election of Mr, Lincoln expressed 



72 



The " Times" on the American War. 



what was, however foolish, the settled decision of the American 
people. 

The attempt to prove that the army was one suited for a 
despotic power was far more persistently carried on. It was 
not, indeed, merely for this reason that we were so constantly 
informed that the Federal army consisted of Irish and Germans. 
It was an inviting topic of abuse for many reasons, and of 
all the misrepresentations that were so common, none, as 
I believe, not even that vast and complicated misrepresen- 
tation which ignored the relations of slavery to the war, did 
so much to excite English prejudices as this story about the 
Irish and Germans. There is an ambiguity about this subject 
which must be shortly stated. There were in America, by the 
census of i860, over 4,000,000 inhabitants of foreign birth- 
including, Irish, 1,600,000 j Germans, 1,300,000; and English and 
Scotch, 540,000 — more than 3,500,000 of whom were in the North. 
Now these naturalized citizens, who had emigrated in the bona fide 
intention of settling in the United States before the first shot had 
been fired, were undoubtedly as much justified in fighting for the 
country of their adoption as the native Americans. They might 
even be expected to enlist in greater proportion than the native 
population, because they would naturally furnish more of that 
floating class from which the armies of all countries are chiefly 
recruited. The real accusation was, that the American armies 
were supplied by persons emigrating from Europe with a view to 
this very purpose. 

In this case, again, the accusation is in one respect trivial 
enough. It is a favourite taunt of the Times (see, for example, 
July 4, 1862, and May 21 and July 4, 1863), that whereas the 
Americans used to complain of our employment of Hessian 
troops in the War of Independence, they now use foreigners 
themselves. This comes with a rather bad grace from a nation 
which raised a foreign legion so lately as in the Crimean-war. 



The Instruments of Despotism. 



73 



It implies a total misrepresentation of the true grounds of 
complaint. No one would have complained of our enlisting 
Germans, or Frenchmen, or any other foreigners in our regiments ; 
and, in fact, I presume that no questions were asked as to the 
nationality of a recruit. But that which covered the German princes 
with an infamy which we shared to some extent was, that they 
sold their regiments to us wholesale without asking their consent. 
If an Irishman likes to exchange potatoes in a Connaught cabin 
for the good fare and comfortable clothing of a Federal soldier 
balanced by the chance of being shot, he may or may not show 
want of sense, but there is no hardship in the case. If we had 
sold a regiment of Irishmen, or if the King of Prussia had sold a 
regiment of Germans, to either side, for money to be paid to the 
proprietor of the regiment, there would have been infamy enough. 
Happily we are too civilized for such transactions to be possible. 
The Times carefully ignored the distinction. 

It would, however, be a proof that the American people were 
not enthusiastic about the war, and that a fit instrument of 
bondage was being framed for them, if it could be proved that the 
army was kept up by immigration, and not by recruits from the 
native population. The Times repeatedly asserted, or insinuated, 
that this was the case. I quote a few instances : — 

So early as July 30, 1861, it speaks of "a standing army in 
which Germans and Irish are counted by the thousand." 

July 26, 1862. — "The army is to a very great extent a foreign 
" army, being composed of German and Irish mercenaries ; and 
" the native Americans who have joined them belong to no very 
" respectable class." 

Six weeks before this it had observed incidentally (June 4) that 
" every New England family has its representative in the field " — 
a statement which was strongly confirmed by the special corre- 
spondent a year after. 

August 26, however, it tells us again that, as the conscription 



74 



The u Times" on the American War. 



will induce all foreigners to leave the States (we shall presently 
see the fulfilment of the prognostication), "we shall now see 
" American citizens fighting their own battles, without the aid of 
" German and Irish mercenaries." 

Dec. 30. — " Their men are for the most part mere hirelings ; 
" the refuse of Ireland and Germany has been swept into their 
" camps at so many dollars a head." 

June 18, 1863. — It speaks of the willingness of the Americans 
to undergo all extremities, " so long as the physical suffering is 
" borne by Irish and Germans, and the pecuniary by the public 
" creditor." 

July 4. — The United States Government are " sending to 
" indiscriminate slaughter myriads of German and Irish mer- 
" cenaries." 

Aug. 8. — What does the Washington Cabinet care " how many 
" graves are dug round Fort Wagner or how many regiments of 
" Irish and German emigrants monthly disappear?" 

Before continuing my quotations from the Times I will give 
one or two passages from the New York correspondent. This 
question placed that gentleman in a curious dilemma. He was 
constantly endeavouring to prove that it would be impossible to 
raise an army, and that, for various reasons, no more Germans of 
Irish would volunteer. On the other hand, he was always proving 
that the whole army was composed of Germans and Irishmen* 
The result is sometimes perplexing, and appears to have bewildered 
his employers. Prospectively, no Germans nor Irish were to be 
found ; retrospectively, the army consisted of nothing else. It 
was indeed impossible to understand how, upon his showing, it 
was kept up at all. 

June 30, 1862. — He tells us that the Yankees have con- 
tributed little to the rank and file of the Federal army ; Irish and 
Germans form at least two-fifths of the whole number of fighting 
men. 



The Instruments of Despotism. 



75 



July 27. — With amusing precision, he says, to show the absence 
of loyalty, that the North can only obtain thirty-nine seamen 
from all the New England States. 

Sept. 16. — It appears that the armies are kept up by wretched 
emigrants drugged with whisky, who " wake up only to find 
" themselves in the Northern camp, liable if they skedaddle to 
" be shot as deserters." 

Feb. 21, 1863. — We have another careful numerical calcula- 
tion proving that there are only 32,330 able-bodied negroes in 
the free States, that as the Government won't dare to recruit in 
the border States, and can't get at the South, negro troops enough 
can never be raised. (Fifteen months afterwards, May 12, 1864, 
he tells us that there are 130,000 negroes in the service, 97,670 
having, I presume, been manufactured.) 

June 15. — He proves that it is impossible to raise 10,000 
negroes. 

I have taken these specimens at random from an immense 
number as indicating the general tone of the New York corre- 
spondent. He generally maintains that negroes can't be got, that 
Yankees won't volunteer, and that the armies are composed of 
Irish and Germans, though, as we shall now see, he frequently 
states that Irish and Germans are equally recusant. The con- 
tinual existence of the army seems to be all but miraculous. Up 
to this point, however, the Times and its correspondent agree in 
asserting the absence of native material from the United States 
army, and agree in filling the void by any number of Germans 
and Irish* 

Aug. 25, 1863. — The Times made the calculation, an extremely 
rough one, that 750,000 men had been killed or put hors de 
combat up to that time on the two sides. And as it allowed 
500,000 of these to the North, it came to the conclusion that the 
"bulk of the Germans and Irish complained of by the South 
must have been naturalized American citizens " — a tolerably 



7 6 



The "Times" on the American War. 



reasonable conclusion, though founded upon doubtful figures and 
contradicting its own repeated insinuations. 

Oct. 9. — The correspondent, however, informs us that " the 
" zeal of the native-born Americans has died away, the unwelcome 
" business is left to raw new comers from Germany and Ireland " 
— a statement which brings back our old friends again. 

Perhaps the assertion that the army was composed of foreign 
elements jtnight be gradually coming true, though it had not been 
true at first. The original troops may have been native, the 
recruits foreign. 

Dec. 12. — He explains again that the army could not be 
kept up were it not for the Irish and German immigrants and 
negroes ; the latter especially, he says, will constitute the sheet- 
anchor of the future American army. (Compare the quotations 
above from February 21 and June 15.) 

Jan. 23, 1864. — He declares that no more men are to be 
got. The foreign immigration would only produce 156,000 men, 
even if all were able-bodied, whereas at least fifty per cent, 
were children, women, and old men ; three hundred thousand are 
required. 

May 3, 1864. — However, the Times states that the waste of 
men is supported by immigration attracted by large bounties, and 
carefully explains how the " surplus population of Europe " is 
attracted. 

April 18.— The correspondent says that the North would long 
ago have been subdued but for the help of foreigners, but that 
now the Irish and Germans are in a state of chronic discontent, 
and won't volunteer. 

After all this, it is not a little surprising to find a demonstration 
in the Times itself, that the immigration theory is all a mistake. 
A debate took place in Parliament upon the Irish emigration. 
In commenting upon it, the Times says (June 11, 1864), that 
Grant alone has 280,000 white troops, that the Irish emigration 



The Instruments of Despotism. 



77 



of 1863 was 94,477, of whom 36,083 only were men, including 
boys of twelve years old. It concludes, " With such figures before 
" us, it is impossible to assume that either German or Irish 
" emigrants up to the present, time form any large element in the 
" American armies. Eighty per cent, of these troops must have 
" been Americans, native or naturalized." 

After this statement, it would be reasonable to suppose that 
the Times would apologize. But the Times never apologizes, it 
simply reverses its statements. 

July 2. — It boldly declared that Grant's army was kept up 
by " an incredible immigration from Europe." 

As the Times had so plainly proved that the immigration of 
1863 was utterly inadequate to fill the ranks, I may remark that 
the immigration at New York (the principal port for immigration) 
only increased from 155,000 in 1863 to 185,000 in 1864, — an 
ample proof that this " incredible immigration " was a mere 
invention of the Times. It continued the old taunts. 

Aug. 2. — " It is felt to be quite a pity not to go on with a war 
" the worst consumption of which can be supplied from the old 
" world." 

The correspondent (August 13) throws some light upon the 
" incredible immigration." " The average volunteers," he tells us, 
" inclusive of Irish and Germans, scarcely exceed thirty a day." 
The more one looks into this warlike stream of immigrants, the 
harder it is to distinguish it. Finally, the Times itself came out 
with the most conclusive exposure of its own errors. 

February 21, 1865. — After giving the numbers raised for the 
Federal army, it remarks with amusing complacency, " We have 
" repeatedly explained that immigration would only account for a 
" small fraction of these results. Even if every adult male 
" immigrant took service in the Federal army immediately upon 
" landing, the supply would only form a very moderate per- 
" centage on the levies raised," and it is notoriously true that 



/ 

yS The " Times" on the American War. 



nothing of the kind took place. There is something truly 
surprising about this. The Daily News or the Star might have 
quoted the same statistics to prove the falsehood of the incessant 
v taunts of the Times. The Herald or Standard, accepting as an 
axiom that everything American is abominable, would in honest 
bigotry have thrown doubt upon the figures or roundly denied 
their accuracy. It was peculiar to the Times to give at once the 
calumny and its refutation with an air of unruffled dignity.'* 

The statement that the military despotism was supported by 
mock elections in the Northern States may be considered as tacitly 
abandoned. Had any proofs been at hand capable of raising a 
presumption that the very sources of self-government were thus 
being poisoned, the Times might have been trusted to adduce 
them. We may, then, assume that, notwithstanding the existence 
of the ordinary, or more than the ordinary, corruption, the 
electors substantially expressed the will of the people. 

The theory that the military despotism was upheld by a foreign 
army is refuted, as well as asserted, by the Times itself. The 
notion that " conscripts from each State would be quartered in 
States with which they had no sympathies " is an amusing instance 
of the readiness of the New York correspondent to swallow the 
most unfounded fictions. 

One other theory remains — that the despotism corrupted the 
people by greenbacks ; and on this, as it was a favourite opinion, 
and one which, so far as I know, was never definitely abandoned, 
I must say a few words. I will quote one or two assertions from 
the Times. 

Feb. 3, 1862. — " It is pretty clear now that war is kept up by a 
" fictitious public enthusiasm, founded upon squandering among 

* I have not been able to find any official statement as to the extent of the 
foreign element in the American armies : but it is said, on good authority, to 
be about five per cent. ; that of naturalized being fifteen per cent. ; and that of 
native Americans eighty per cent, of the whole strength. 



The Instruments of Despotism. 



79 



" the small class of political contractors and agitators two million 
" dollars a day." 

Jan. 20, 1863. — lt The people have turned the war into a 
" scramble for profits ; the army of public banditti have won a full 
" and decisive victory in the field for gain." 

June 18. — It seems that the war is carried on partly from 
" reckless fanaticism," and partly "to glut the avarice of a few 
obscure persons." 

I need not quote any of the incessant assertions to the same 
effect of the New York correspondent, who was never so happy 
as when proving that Northern patriotism meant a lust for green- 
backs, and Northern Abolitionism was a mixture of hypocrisy and 
fanaticism. The theory of the Times took a slightly different 
form at a later period of the war. It believed in the existence of 
what it called a " fictitious prosperity," and was not a little per- 
plexed to account for its extraordinary duration. The bubble 
would not burst long after the Times had declared that it 
inevitably must. 

Thus (Nov. 28, 1863) we are told that "the factitious creation 
" of wealth by reckless issues of paper money, and the equally 
" reckless reduction of the available amount of labour by fearful 
" slaughter of the working classes in civil war, may raise the rate 
tt of wages, and so tempt to emigrate the inhabitants of populous 
" countries. These things give little hope for the future prospects 
" of a country that really seems to verify the paradox of the 
" poet, ' where (paper) wealth accumulates and men decay.'" 

On December 14, 1863, it expresses its amazement at the 
duration of a fictitious prosperity which an inflated currency and 
a prodigal expenditure are sure to produce for the time. 

I believe that on the strength of these and similar statements 
many persons in England seriously believed that the war was 
carried on because, by some strange commercial hocus-pocus, 
it paid, or seemed to pay, for itself. It was a kind of Law's 



8o The " Times " on the American War. 



scheme, stimulated and accompanied by a war. There are some 
men who will always gladly believe that great results can be 
accomplished by petty motives — men who would once have 
delighted to explain the French Revolution by the gold of Pitt, 
or the American war of independence by speculations in tea. 
This explanation of the war would be congenial to them. 
A great revolution worked out by inferior instruments, a tremen- 
dous convulsion of a society composed in overwhelming pro- 
portions of half-educated and half-refined men, must infallibly 
bring to the surface much that is shocking to delicate tastes. 
There were chances of profit for the large class, nowhere larger 
than in America, to whom even national honour would afford 
mere matter of speculation. In a struggle which shook society 
to its base, there was good scrambling for high prizes. But it is 
scarcely characteristic of a generous or of a philosophical mind, 
to mistake the profit incidentally arising to stock-jobbers and 
shoddy manufacturers for the cause of the whole struggle. 
Nations are moved to their depths, and efforts which would 
strain the most unbounded resources are stimulated, by deeper 
and less grovelling motives than the hope of picking up a few 
dollars in the confusion. A battle, doubtless, is a good thing 
for the crows and the creeping things ; but it is not generally 
fought for their benefit. The theory, stated plainly, confutes 
itself so conclusively that I need scarcely point out that its 
political economy presents a few difficulties. Perhaps this may 
be due to the fact that, as the Times put it (June 24, 1862), 
" the world is not large enough to hold " political economy 
and the United States " together." I can understand a 
" fictitious prosperity " produced by borrowing other people's 
money ; but the American debt was raised at home almost 
entirely. I can understand that " fictitious prosperity " which 
accompanies a great inflation of credit, and a consequent increase 
of circulation, and which lasts until persons have begun to realize.- 



The Instruments of Despotism. 



81 



But credit has not been inflated in the United States ; the 
paper currency has produced its natural effect in the rise of 
prices ; and so soon as that effect commenced, the Yankee was 
quite acute enough to discover that his paper dollar was worth 
less than his silver dollar. A fictitious prosperity of this kind 
lasting for four years is simply incredible. The fact that it 
has not long ago collapsed is proof enough that the prosperity, 
such as it was, was really due to great resources, not to 
imaginary wealth. The simple truth is, that turning capital 
from other industries into the production of divers machines 
for blowing men to bits, does not tend to make a country richer, 
or even to make it think itself richer for any length of time. 
Even the receipt of killing off a large proportion of the able- 
bodied males would not necessarily cause such a rise of wages 
as to add to the general prosperity of the country. Widows and 
orphans are apt to make their presence known. 

Granting, however, that there was some truth caricatured in 
these statements, it is plain enough, from one simple considera- 
tion, that they do not reveal a true cause of the continuance 
of the war. The centres of the "shoddy" interest were the 
places most opposed to the policy of the Administration, such 
as the city of New York. That policy was most unflinchingly 
supported by the country districts of the " territorial democracy," 
where the drain of labour and the rise of prices were most 
severely felt, and to which the contractors' profits never pene- 
trated. 

XI. — Military Criticism. 

I have endeavoured to show that the Times gave a preposterous 
caricature of the origin of the war, of its effect upon the country, 
and of the means by which it was maintained. The prejudice, 
which denied the war to be in any way related to slavery, and 
which denied that it was leading to any result but a military 

6 



82 



The " Times" on the American War. 



despotism, led to an equal distortion of the facts of the war. I 
shall endeavour to illustrate this by giving a short summary of 
the Times' account of the last year of the war. I may remark 
that any one who believes in the impartiality of the Times would 
do well to compare these articles with an extremely able series 
which appeared in the Globe — a paper not favourable to the 
North, but quite above the folly of distorting the facts of the 
war. 

The fortunes of the Confederacy culminated in the spring of 

1863. In the East, General Lee was able to make his most 
determined effort at an invasion of the North. In the West, 
Grant was detained for months before Vicksburg, and a long 
delay produced in the otherwise almost uniform progress of the 
Federal arms in the Western States. The battle of Gettysburg 
and the taking of Vicksburg, which occurred on the 4th of July, 
marked the turn of the tide. In the autumn, Rosecrans cleared 
Tennessee and advanced to Chattanooga. He was severely 
defeated at Chickamauga, but the fortunes of the North were 
restored by Grant's victory on Missionary Ridge. At the close 
of 1863 the Northern side was distinctly in the ascendant. In 

1864, as we all remember, Grant fought the desperate series of 
battles which resulted in the siege of Petersburg. Sherman 
forced his way to Atlanta and thence to the Atlantic coast. The 
series of victories under which the Confederacy collapsed are 
fresh in our memories. Let me now give the Times' account of 
these events. 

The Times (July 9, 1863) had explained, on Lee's invasion, 
that there was a general wish throughout the North that President 
Davis might instal himself at Washington. Even after the arrival 
of the decisive news (July 18, 1863) it declared Meade to be in 
danger and Grant in a hopeless position. (July 23.) — It could 
still see no reason for the Northern exultation. (July 27.) — The 
news being beyond question, it observed that " Lee had only 



Military Criticism. 



83 



" been prevented by three days' bloody fighting from obtaining 
M important military successes " — a circumlocution which may 
compare with the ingenious formulae about " strategic movements," 
and " drawing a man further from his base." The New York 
riots, however, proved that " the hopelessness of the [Northern] 
" enterprise is never more evident than at the time when it seems 
" most promising." This consoling reflection was strengthened 
by Morgan's raid into Ohio, which, it may be recollected, ended 
in the capture of Morgan and all his men. In November, 
Mr. Lincoln had the bad taste to call for a public thanksgiving. 
The Times was astonished. " It is," it remarked, " simply 
" absurd to say that the condition of the South is worse, rela- 
" tively to the North, than it was at the beginning of the war." 

It had been encouraged by Rosecrans' defeat at Chicka- 
mauga and temporary confinement at Chattanooga. Having 
entirely forgotten the existence of Grant's army — part of which, 
under Sherman, reinforced the army at Chattanooga with decisive 
effect — it announced (November 10) that "Thomas's success" 
(Thomas was then in command at Chattanooga) " depends upon 
" his union with Bumside " (then at Knoxville) ; " he cannot 
u expect considerable reinforcements from any other quarter." 
By " success," it explains that it means escape from surrender. 
(November 14.) — It announces that "the best that can be expected 
" from the invaders of Tennessee is to be spared a ruinous and 
" ignominious retreat." The campaign of 1863 has ended 
leaving matters in the same state as in the beginning. (Novem- 
ber 23.) — The Northern forces in the West are in exactly the 
same state as those of the English at Yorktown and Saratoga. 
" It will be an extraordinary instance of good fortune if Grant is 
able to rescue" Burnside. Grant defeated Bragg, as I have 
observed, at Missionary Ridge. The Times, however, in summing 
up results, observed (December 14) that the Federals had in this 
year " gained the one real victory of the war. We can hardly 

6—2 



84 The " Times" on the American War. 



" describe by that name the success of Grant against Bragg, but 
" Gettysburg was a pitched battle fairly won." 

To explain this assertion about one of the most decided and 
skilfully planned victories of the war, I must remark that the 
Times, like its sporting contemporaries, kept a private prophet, 
one " S." This gentleman was always prophesying with signal 
want of success, as his prophecies were simply renewed appli- 
cations of one single dogma, viz., that the more territory the 
North conquered the more they would have to keep (which is 
undeniable), and therefore the harder it would be to keep it 
(which does not follow). This prophet had assured the Times 
(on December n) that Bragg was in the act of falling back 
when Grant attacked him, that there was nothing in the nature 
of a pitched battle, and that everything depended upon the 
struggle at Knoxville. The Times apparently considered " S." 
as a military critic of some skill, to judge from the space which 
they assigned to his letters, and their frequent coincidence 
with his opinions. The taking of Vicksburg was not to be 
counted in the list of victories, I presume, because, as the Times 
occasionally pointed out, the Confederates could command other 
points on the Mississippi. 

At the commencement of 1864 the North were therefore in a 
bad way. 

Feb. 17. — The North have only kept up their armies by the 
help of negroes and foreigners. " Longstreet has been entirely 
successful in his operations round Knoxville." (He did not take 
it, but that, of course, is a trifle.) The Confederates have met 
their enemy at every point. Hence, we are not surprised to 
hear that (May 3) the "present prospects of the Confederates 
at this fourth year of the war are brighter than ever." 

The great operations of 1864 now began, Grant assaulting 
the right and Sherman the left of the long Confederate line. 
In both quarters the Confederates retired, in obedience to a 



Military Criticism. 



85 



preconcerted plan. Thus (May 24) Lee's falling back was 
" preconcerted." (June 3.) — " The latest news prepares us for 
the complete failure of Grant's expedition." Johnson's retreat 
before Sherman "may have been a preconcerted plan to draw 
Sherman away from his base of operations." As for Grant, 
it appeared presently (June 7) that "it is hard enough to get to 
" Richmond ; it will be still harder to discover when they [the 
" Federals] get there what they have gained by the enterprise, 
" which has cost them such enormous sacrifices." (June 8.) — ■ 
" We recognize the truth of President Davis's saying," that Vir- 
ginia alone could hold out twenty years after the fall of Richmond. 

Every successive move of Grant's was a failure. (July 2.) — - 
Every move in this campaign " has been made because the 
former manoeuvre failed." Lee " did not deign to interrupt 
Grant's flank march." Grant persevered, or, as the Times put 
it (August 31), "still hovered about Richmond." Some relief 
to the dismal prospect was given by Sheridan's victory in the 
Shenandoah Valley; but this (October 3) was of more 
importance politically than in a military sense. Sheridan's 
success must have been valueless ; for, as the Times observes 
(December 2), Sherman's taking of Atlanta is the chief Federal 
achievement of the year, and that is likely to end in disaster. 

Sept. 15. — Grant's campaign had, as "S." assured them, "so 
" completely broken down as almost to have passed from 
" attention," as in fact might be expected from a previous 
assertion of "S." that "Grant was as much a general as Tom 
Sayers" (June 6); M'Clellan having "shown clearly enough 
the way to take Richmond," whereas Grant, " with a rare 
obliquity of judgment," had taken " a road difficult beyond all 
others, and through country special unpromising." "S." doubtless 
knew Grant's and M'Clellan's business better than Grant and 
M'Clellan themselves, for he had pooh-poohed the former pretender 
to military science in almost the same terms. " M'Clellan," he 



86 The " Times'' on the American War. 



said (May 5, 1862), "has taken the worst possible means of 
advancing on Richmond." In obedience to this great authority, 
the Times asserted (November 7, 1864) the "one principle of 
Federal warfare" to be to give away two Federals, five Federals, 
ten Federals for a " single Confederate life," and Grant blundered 
on from failure to failure, unconscious, it must be hoped, that he 
was acting in defiance of the Times' criticisms. 

Meanwhile, Sherman was being drawn farther from his base. 
(July 7.) — If Grant were repulsed, Sherman must be overwhelmed. 
Sherman managed to struggle on, and at last threatened Atlanta. 
The Times announced (August 8) that Atlanta was in danger. 
The value of the success was measurable by the assertion 
that the capture of the arsenal might compensate the North 
for the invasion of Maryland. Sherman, however, was in serious 
danger, which became gradually more alarming. (September 12.) 
— He has managed to get into Atlanta, but will probably be cut 
off. Although (September 20) his campaign contrasts favourably 
with Grant's, the value of the prize is doubtful. Indeed 
(September 22) it is proved to be almost valueless by the fact that 
he did not attack the enemy's intrenchments only six miles ofE 
His danger became gradually imminent. Atlanta (November 10) 
was really of no importance. Indeed (November 12), ''the 
" barren victory in the Shenandoah Valley was all the Federals 
" had to boast of in the autumn," for Sherman's position was 
rapidly becoming untenable. (December 2.) — As I have before 
observed, it appears that Sherman's capture of Atlanta was the 
chief Federal success of the year, and that if Sherman should 
be finally beaten the balance would be against the Federals. For 
Sherman was already in " retreat " once more. (December 3.) — 
Sherman, we are told, had reached Atlanta, but there his 
triumphs ended. Hood speedily made the place untenable. 

It scarcely admitted of a doubt that Sherman's expedition must 
result in a disaster. Everything looked unfavourable. " The most 



Military Criticism. 



87 



" remarkable feature of the war," it says (December 22), " is the 
" wild and desperate effort of an out-manceuvred general to 
" extricate himself from his position." At length news came, 
filtered through Southern sources, and worked up by the Times 
into one of the most curious masses of error to be found even in 
its pages. (December 26, 1864.) — It announced that Sherman 
was emerging. His object was to reach the sea at any price. He 
had with him " only half the force he took from Atlanta." (This 
was a misrepresentation, apparently, of a statement that half 
Sherman's army had at some part of the march been sent to 
threaten Augusta.) "The Savannah was navigable for 400 miles 
above the point at which Sherman is approaching it." (It is 
navigable for 250 in all.) The Ogeechee is one of the tributaries 
of the Savannah. (The Savannah and Ogeechee flow parallel 
to each other, and guarded Sherman's two flanks ; the Times 
forced the Ogeechee into the Savannah, with the apparent 
intention of cutting off Sherman's "retreat") Sherman could 
have no serious intention of taking Savannah. It is supposed 
that he intends to cross the Savannah to meet a force sent east- 
wards from Port Royal to meet him. This force was, no doubt, 
assumed to be so mystified by the sudden changes in geography as 
to move in precisely the opposite direction to that which in a 
normal state of things would bring it to meet Sherman. 

Besides these main armies, General Banks had made an expedi- 
tion from New Orleans, and completely failed. As the Confederates 
began the year with brighter prospects than ever before, as Grant 
lost battle after battle at a fabulous cost of life, as Sherman was 
retreating with little hope of safety, and Banks had been all but 
crushed, it is not surprising that the Times continued to think the 
Northern cause hopeless. Suddenly the ground it had thought so 
solid gave way under its feet. Savannah surrendered, Wilmington 
Was taken, Charleston was taken, and Sherman pierced South 
Carolina as he had pierced Georgia* The Confederacy seemed to 



88 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



be that hollow shell to which Mr. Seward had compared it, much 
to the amusement of the Times. For a time it made a feeble 
attempt at maintaining that, after all, the loss was not so great. 
The " first act " of the war was over. But that only had happened 
which " all Europe " had expected to happen at once, and if the 
South stood firm the end was no nearer. A guerilla warfare 
might be expected to succeed to the conflicts of regular armies. 
Suddenly Grant defeated Lee, and with the capture of Rich- 
mond the war practically expired. The Times' correspondent still 
remained faithful. He hinted even (April 18) that the conclusive 
victory was rather " theatrical " than substantial, and that Lee 
was retreating when it took place on a preconcerted plan. The last 
flutter of this gentleman, as I may here mention, was an attempt 
to prove that Texas might still hold out for years ; the letter was 
written after the last Texas general had surrendered. The Times 
had but one excuse, and that an absurdly feeble excuse, to make. 
The whole fortune of the war, it said (April 17), had been 
changed by the errors of the generals opposed to Sherman. If 
President Davis had not superseded Johnson, things might have 
gone differently. 

The " ifs " of history are innumerable ; but this can hardly be 
a serious statement. Every item of news from the South makes 
the truth more evident. Impartial observers had remarked it 
during the war, but the Times had refused to see it. The 
simple fact is, that of two gamblers who stake equal amounts 
with widely different fortunes, the poorer will be ruined first. 
The last reserves win the battle. The Southern cause was 
bleeding to death whilst the North had hardly developed its 
full strength. There were abundant symptoms of the fatal 
weakness, but the limes apparently put faith in its New York 
correspondent (a degree of credulity of which one would have 
thought the Times specially unlikely to be guilty), and supposed 
these statements to be mere Northern forgeries. The Times, in 



Military Criticism. 



8 9 



fact, by a curious mental hallucination, appeared to think that 
the Southern soldiers were immortal. When it calculated that 
Lee had only been prevented from winning a great success by 
three days' hard fighting, it never occurred to the writer that 
this failure of success was necessarily a tremendous loss, and that 
even a Southern victory might easily be bought too dear. The 
losses of the North were constantly kept before the English 
imagination by the incessant calculations and exaggerations of the 
New York correspondent. The Southern losses were carefully 
concealed, and the Confederacy presented for a long time an 
apparently unbroken front. But any one whose thoughts were 
too deep, must have known that the loss was not the less severe 
because not openly avowed. 

There is one more remark to be made. The failure to take 
into account the element of slavery still misled the Times' judg- 
ment. It said (Nov. 7, 1864) that the negro would fight for his 
master. As the experiment was not tried, it is impossible to say 
whether this is true ; but it is at least significant that the masters 
did not venture to try the experiment until the last extremity. The 
employment of blacks by the Federal troops had a very different 
effect from that which would have followed their employment 
by the Confederates. It is clear gain if you can make a 
battering-ram against your enemy's fort of a beam taken from 
his own foundations. It is by no means gain to him to use 
the same material for an opposing machine. However this 
may be, slavery produced one cardinal weakness in the Southern 
defences which the Times was forced studiously to ignore. Where- 
ever the Federal forces went they stayed. They found half the 
population at least passively friendly, and by freeing them, they, 
for the time, paralyzed the hostile moiety. But the Times, by 
averting its sight from all that concerned emancipation, except 
where emancipation involved accidental cruelty, failed to allow 
for this in its calculations. 



90 The " Times" on the American War. 



XII. — Moral. 

On Dec. 31, 1863, after speaking of the "foolish vituperation 
of England " which had been fashionable with the American press, 
the Times added, with superlative calmness, "the entire absence of 
" retaliation on the English side can scarcely be claimed as a 
" merit ; the spectator is naturally calmer than the combatant, 
" nor is he tempted to echo his incoherent cries." 

This remark suggests a few rather curious reflections. The 
American press is accused of " foolish vituperation of England." 
I fully concur in the justice of this charge. From the New York 
Herald upwards there is much which no Englishman can read — 
few Englishmen, happily, read it at all — without a certain jar 
upon his patriotic sensibilities. The truth is that human nature 
on both sides of the Atlantic is tolerably alike, and that in both 
countries angry men use strong language, and men in the excite- 
ment of a life-and-death struggle don't pause to adjust their 
epithets or qualify their judgments with nicety. This is indeed 
admitted by the writer in the Times. He might with perfect 
fairness have gone further. The American press has, from the 
nature of the case, no such concentration of able and scholarlike 
J writers as those of our metropolitan and best provincial papers. 
It is far inferior to ours in talent. I cannot so well judge as to 
its principles ; but I am inclined to believe that we should find 
it impossible to produce any match for the Neiu York Herald 
in thorough baseness and disposition to pander to the worst 
popular tastes* On the other hand, they have many journal 
Which appear to me to be as honestly but not so ably conducted 
as the best of our own. Abuse, however, is abuse, whether it 
comes in the shape of vulgar bluster and threats, or whether it is 
couched in delicate phrases. The American press does not possess 
the happy art of expressing envy, malice, and all uncharitableness 



Moral 



9i 



in terms of philanthropy and brotherly love ; but the substance 
of its remarks sometimes reminds me of what I have read in the 
Times. It wields a bludgeon instead of a rapier ; but it comes to 
the same whether your skull is broken or you are run through 
the body. 

But, says the Times, there has been an entire absence of 
retaliation on the English side. Let me shortly recall some of 
the compliments to America which I have already quoted from 
the Times. The war, it said, was called by the North an anti- 
slavery war j this was for the most part a mere pretext to blind 
foreigners ; so far as a desire for emancipation meant any- 
thing, it meant to cover designs of diabolical malignity; it 
was intended to lead to the organization of " a series of 
Cawnpores " (September 19, 1862), or to the total extirpa- 
tion of every white male in the South. The real motives of 
the war were far more commonplace ; it was, in fact, a mere 
squabble for territory ; in part due to a desire for protective tariffs 
unjustly favourable to the North, and having regard to the views 
of a large class, it might fairly be called a war " to keep slavery 
as one of the social elements of the Union." The desire for 
emancipation was " introduced into the war by an afterthought 
it served as a thin superficial varnish to vulgar, and sometimes to 
atrocious motives. In pursuing a wild will-of-the-wisp, the Northern 
armids, utterly unable to conquer the South, overmatched in states^ 
rrianship, generalship, and courage, had made an easy conquest of 
their countrymen's liberties. The free, self-governing nation of 
English blood had become the humble slave of a despotism at once 
oppressive and ridiculous. Mob law had suppressed all that was 
noble and exalted in the nation, and was leading them to a fearful 
abyss of bankruptcy and ruin. The war had rapidly degenerated 
into a mere scramble for profits, kept up by profuse issues of 
paper money, and by a gigantic debt on which they did not 
even seriously intend to pay interest. Such as it was, the North 



9 2 



The " Times " on the A mcrican War. 



would not fight in it themselves. They scraped together the 
refuse of Europe and stole the Southern negroes. Every boast 
which they had ever made was proved to be empty ; every taunt 
which they had aimed at Europe might be retorted upon them- 
selves. An unrighteous war, in defiance of every principle upon 
which American government was based, would have no result but 
hopeless bankruptcy and the complete and final prostration of 
liberty. The republic had rotted into an empire, and the gangrene, 
as it elegantly expressed it, had burst. 

This, forsooth, was not vituperation, because, I suppose, it was 
so obviously true. It is no abuse to call a chimney-sweep black ; 
but when he retorts, in his vulgar language, that you are a bloated 
aristocrat, and that he will whip you well when he has time for 
the job, he is indulging in " foolish vituperation." Or, perhaps, 
" vituperation " is too coarse a term to apply to the elegant 
language of the Times and its brethren. If I had proved that 
the Times had made a gigantic blunder from end to end as to 
the causes, progress, and consequences of the war, I should have 
done little. Its opinion might be proved worthless : but it 
would be merely worthless in the sense in which the old astro- 
nomers' notions of the solar system were worthless ; they did the 
solar system no harm. But I contend that I have proved simul- 
taneously that it was guilty of " foolish vituperation," and as I 
am weak enough to think anything a serious evil which tends to 
alienate the freest nation of the old world from the great nation 
in the new, whose foundation is amongst our most glorious 
achievements, I contend, also, that I have proved the Times to 
be guilty of a public crime. It was, I admit, due to gross 
ignorance, and not to malice ; it may, I also admit, take such 
comfort as it can from the consideration that equal errors were 
committed in America ; but I still think its conduct criminal. 

If, however, my previous statements should be insufficient, I 
will collect a few, and only a few, more specimens of what I under- 



Moral 



93 



stand by abuse, pure and simple ; and I will show by one or two 
examples what is the nature of the evil that may result. I will 
quote nothing from that New York correspondent whose letters 
are one long, tiresome tirade, that must, one would think, have 
sickened even his employers. I will merely ask any one to tell 
me whether the passages I am about to quote contain " foolish 
vituperation," or what term can be found in the English language 
that will more aptly describe them. 

March 19, 1863 — Contains a good specimen of the Times 
" historical parallel style," in which " all history " is ransacked to 
prove two platitudes and one false analogy. The platitudes are 
that "States are not made in a day," and that " there is no crime 
so ruinous as weakness or political rottenness." The parallel — ■ 
so obvious that one wonders it had never been previously sug- 
gested — is between North and South, on the one hand, and, on 
the other, England and France when the sovereignty of France 
was claimed by the kings of both countries. This ingenious 
parallel is worked out at some length to help us to divine the 
future of America. Meanwhile, we are told that " the hard 
" metal and the sharp edge of a loftier nature and sterner will 
" have cut into that great gangrene [the Union], as our old 
" writers would have described it, and it has burst and gone." 
The once United States are a mere heap of loose materials 
" and caldron of molten stuff ready to receive whatever form 
" fortune may determine." This is the general text. I will 
now give some of the sermon. 

Oct. 12, 186 1. — "We regard this unnatural struggle with 
" loathing and horror . . . the most groundless and wanton 
" civil quarrel of which history gives us any account." 

July 16, 1862. — "Even in America, credulous and simple as 
" we may there seem to be when we say so, honesty would, we 
" believe, be the best policy," and it dilates upon the systematic 
falsification of contemporary history. 



94 The "Times" on the American War. 



July 17. — The Americans are, it seems, ." delighted with the 
great distress which has fallen upon our Lancashire operatives;" 
they wish " to multiply the existing evil, to make it as wide and 
all-pervading as possible "• — as was conclusively proved by the 
George Griswold. 

July 18. — " The feeling is becoming very general that if we 

" ought not to stop this effusion of blood by 

" mediation, we ought to give our moral weight to our English 
" kith and kin, who have gallantly striven so long for their liberties 
" against a mongrel race of plunderers and oppressors." 

Aug. 12. — Mr. Roebuck's reviling "is so very like the truth 
" that it will probably be received with unbounded indignation. 
" Yet it is becoming, we are sure, the general opinion of Europe." 

Feb. 20, 1863. — The notorious Manhattan is quoted and 
elaborately commented upon throughout an article as a fair 
specimen of " the fiercest Unionist and most uncompromising 
Northerner." After quoting many of his ravings, the Times 
adds its hope that, " in speaking the language of the North, we 
" have improved our own tone, and manifested those generous 
' ' sympathies with an invader, which have been asked for at our 
" hands." 

Jan. 20, 1863. — "A carnival of corruption" — "the people 
demoralized." 

Jan. 26. — "No serious intention of repaying the loan at all." 

May 21. — "The North have given no indications of sorrow 
or distress," in proof of which it appeals to the correspondent's 
letters. 

I may remark upon this and similar accusations of heartless- 
ness, that the Times never, so far as I have been able to discover, 
alludes to the most signal proof to the contrary, in that almost 
unequalled effort of private benevolence — the Sanitary Com- 
mission. People so heartless do not usually subscribe munifi- 
cently to their sick and wounded. 



Moral. 



95 



May 28. — People " naturally asked whether the gentleman was 
" to rule in the Old World and the opposite character in the New 
u ... it is vain to look for those higher principles from 
" which alone we might expect a settlement of the question." 
This pleasing article ends with the suggestion already quoted, that 
the Americans should sometimes think what "ought" means. 

June 18. — "Presumptuous folly, reckless fanaticism, gambling 
cupidity to glut the avarice of a few obscure persons," are 
attributed to the North. 

Sept. 18. — "The Americans must be described as creatures of ' 
" passion, without reason, or only that lower acuteness of under- 
" standing which enables them to adapt means to their immediate 
" ends." The Americans are ruled by blackguards (May 28) ; it 
is natural to assume them to be brute beasts. 

Indeed, as it attributed to them (July 11, 1862) the senti- 
ment, " Evil, be thou my good," it may be said to have insinuated 
their possession of some diabolic qualities. 

Oct. 23. — America is in the hands of "brawlers, impostors, and 
adventurers of every kind." 

Jan. 22, 1864. — " The Southerners were daily told of a universal 
" organization in which the will of the majority should override 
" all Constitutions, all international law, all institutions, every 
" right and interest that stood in its way. They dreaded — and it 
" must be said, justly dreaded, the full brunt of that tyranny 
" which they had long known, and which, it must be said, they 
" had helped to create, but which they now saw about to be 
" turned on themselves." 

July 5, 1864. — (I may remark, as a characteristic circumstance, / 
that each previous Fourth of July had been marked by an article 
exulting over the breakdown of all American anticipations, and 
marked by such oratory as that of which I am giving specimens.) 
" This war has been carried on with a cruelty far surpassing any- 
" thing that can be laid to the charge of England. Towns have 



g6 The " Times " on the A mericcm War. 



" been burnt down in diabolical wantonness, the inhabitants of 
" captured cities put to work in chains, universal plunder has 
" impoverished the chief people of the conquered States, Congress 
" has passed Confiscation Acts," &c. &c. I have said nothing 
as to charges of this nature, chiefly because I have the fear of 
Colonel Crawley's case before my eyes, and know that to establish 
the truth or falsehood of any charge about things happening at a 
distance of several thousand miles would require an accumulation 
of proofs for which I have not the means nor the time or space. 
One remark must be made, which illustrates a special difficulty 
under which I labour. A false impression may be given more 
easily and more safely by omission than commission. Many 
of the most grievous misrepresentations of the Times are due 
to the art of omitting favourable circumstances. It is hard, 
however, for me to assert that hidden away in some of the 
vast bulk of printed paper there may not lurk many statements 
which I have failed to remark. I know no means of giving 
any adequate idea of the precise extent to which the darker 
shades have been blackened, and the brighter omitted from the 
picture. I can only dwell upon positive faults in the outline. 
I will, therefore, merely remark that whilst the Times frequently 
alludes to alleged Federal atrocities, it passes with a tender 
hand over those charged on similar evidence against the Con- 
federates. It speaks of General Macneile's execution of the 
men in Missouri. Indeed, the story so pleased the New York 
correspondent that he related it at full length a second time 
many months after its occurrence, with no intimation that it 
was not a new occurrence. But the Times scarcely mentions 
Quantrell's atrocious massacre of the inhabitants of Lawrence. 
I have found no reference to Forrest's massacre of negro troops 
at Fort Pillow, though, whether false or true, the story was 
supported by elaborate evidence. Indeed, as I have said, the 
only reference to a slaughter of negro prisoners is adduced as 



Moral. 



97 



a ground of attack upon Lincoln for raising negro troops. And 
I have found no allusion to that charge which, more than any- 
other, tended to embitter the Northern feeling — that, namely, of 
the systematic ill-treatment of Northern prisoners. It may be 
exaggerated or false, though a full account of the evidence upon 
which it rests has been published, but it should have been 
noticed. It is a characteristic proceeding, by the way, of the 
New York correspondent, that he attributes the ferocity of 
the New York rioters in 1863 to the "cold-blooded brutality" 
of the Republican journals, which had remonstrated, very sensibly, 
it would seem, against the practice of firing blank cartridges to 
intimidate them. 

These quotations will probably serve as sufficient examples of 
the tone adopted by the Times whenever the North was in a bad 
way ; for if anything could add to the impression made by the 
abuse, it is the contrast afforded by occasional intervals of civility. 
I cannot fully go into this charge. I will just remark that the 
abuse increased in vigour from Fort Sumter up to the end of 
1 86 1, 'and the connection of the war with slavery was strongly 
denied. During the spring of 1862 the early successes of the 
North caused the Times to speak of it with decent civility. It 
" could hardly blame the North," it said (April 28), for seeking 
what it honestly believed to be its rights, though blindly. And 
it incidentally admitted the war to be due to slavery. (April 17.) 
— It was " caused by the deadly animosities of slaveholders and 
freemen," and " the effect of an attempt to unsettle the relations 
of master and slave." Again, the fortunes of the North declined 
till they reached their nadir in the spring of 1863. The Times, 
besides plentiful abuse, felt itself encouraged up to the pitch of 
admitting slavery to be connected with the Southern cause, and 
defending it as socially advantageous, and even as not opposed to 
the Bible. This I have already proved. As the North became 
victorious last spring they effected another strategetical movement. 

7 



98 The " Times " on the American War. 



Let me now take its treatment of one or two special points. I 
have shown incidentally what was the Times' opinion of President 
Lincoln. 

Oct. 21, 1862. — It discussed the character of "Lincoln the 
Last," or " Honest Abe," " Honest to his party, not to his 
people." " Such honesty," it added, " is an intolerable evil." " How 
" insupportable must be the despotism in which a man of this 
" calibre is despot !" and it speculated on Lincoln's name being in 
future classed amongst those of " monsters, wholesale assassins 
and butchers." 

I have also quoted enough to show the view they took of the 
great measure with which Lincoln's name will be for ever 
associated — the emanicipation proclamation. It was, at the time, 
supposed to be a cloak for a diabolical crime. It appeared 
afterwards to be a mere reckless bid for support. He was ready 
(January 12, 1863) to take "peace or war, or both at once; 
" slavery or abolition, or both together ; he gives every principle a 
" chance," his one object being, it is to be supposed, to keep power. 

Sept. 17, 1863. — It observed, "Strange that he should have 
" blundered and vacillated so long as he has without losing 
" confidence in himself, or altogether losing that of his 
" countrymen." 

Sept. 24. — It explains that he is " really indifferent to slavery ; 
"it is his misfortune to have become under pressure of the 
" merciless philanthropist, an instrument for exterminating the 
" whites." 

Dec. 23. — His inaugural message is " the most cold-blooded 
political document ever published." 

I have found no traces of the Times abandoning this view of his 
character. 

Nov. 22, 1864. — It remarked upon his re-election that we 
have no great reason to complain of Lincoln's course. " He has 
gone through the course of defying and insulting England, which 



Moral. 



99 



is the traditional way of obtaining the Irish vote." But for his 
countrymen his re-election, as I have shown, means " the abandon- 
ment of the right of self-government," and all kinds of horrible 
things. In short, he was a blundering, unprincipled, cold-blooded 
despot. 

On April 17, 1865, the Times remarked on his having chosen 
" the most odious and offensive topics that could be obtruded 
into a speech on reconstruction," and infers that the only hope for 
America is in the rise of a new race of statesmen. 

The news came of his assassination, and two days afterwards 
(April 19) we are told Lincoln was " a man who could not under any 
" circumstances have been easily replaced." He " had won for 
"himself the respect and confidence of all." His "perfect 
" honesty had soon become apparent." 

April 29. — Lincoln "was as little a tyrant as any man who 
" ever lived. He could have been a tyrant if he had liked, 
" but he never made so much as an ill-natured speech." He was 
" doubtless glad at last to see slavery perish, but his personal 
" opinions on that subject were not permitted to influence the 
" policy of the Government." 

I will venture to say that I could not have contradicted the 
Times more flatly myself. The death of a great man naturally 
induces us to speak kindly of his memory. But it does not 
always induce us to contradict in terms every criticism we passed 
upon him till the day of his death. Either the praise must be 
hypocritical, or the abuse must have been ill founded. Probably 
both are worthless ; and such compliments are more likely to 
provoke contempt than gratitude. 

Let me notice the way in which the Times received the news 
of the first battle, in which an army of raw volunteers broke and 
fled in confusion after several hours' hard fighting, without food, 
under a hot sun, upon the unexpected arrival of hostile rein- 
forcements. 



IOO 



The " Times " on the A merican War. 



The Times described (August 7, 1861) how " 75,000 American 
" patriots fled for twenty miles in an agony of fear, although no 
" one was pursuing them ; how 75,000 other patriots abstained 
" from pursuing their 75,000 enemies because they were not 
" informed how stark frightened they were." The artillery was not 
captured, but picked up. This is all fair play. The comments 
are the special beauty of the article. The Government, said 
the Times, " will call out a few more millions of volunteers, and 
" must make a confident demand upon the incredulous world for a 
" few more hundred millions sterling." But at bottom there must 
be a growing consciousness that " the Southern nut is too hard to 
" crack ; that the military line as a matter of business does not 
" answer." There will be " tall words," but " in the face of that 
" screaming crowd, the grand army of the Potomac," they will be 
useless. Some silly boasts had been made on a false report of a 
Northern victory. The North, said the Times, expects to " chaw 
us up," but "we are not fearful enough to be ferocious." When 
at peace, they " will not be so bloodthirsty as they think ; or, if 
they should be, they will not be so mischievous as they say." 
Spain would be strong enough to deal with their navy, and 
Canada has before now given a good account of Yankee invaders. 
This kind of writing was admirably suited to soothe a wounded 
national vanity, and increase the mutual esteem of the two 
countries. 

I will conclude with one example, to show the effect which the 
Times was likely to produce upon international relations. The 
period at which we approached most closely to a war was doubt- 
less on the Trent affair. Mr. Bright charged the Times, in the 
session of 1862, with having done its best to bring about a war. 
It was hardly worth while to answer a gentleman who had just 
made the ridiculous assertions to the Liverpool Chamber of 
Commerce that cotton was to be first expected from Northern 
successes, and that the war had given a deathblow to slavery. 



Moral. 



101 



The Times, however, condescended to say (February 18) " We 
" expressed ourselves so mildly, so cautiously, so reservedly, with 
" such thorough submission to the law of nations and the legal 
" authorities, that for several days after the rebound of the tidings 
" at America, its writers were proclaiming that England took it 
" very quietly indeed." Let us see how matters really stood. 

On November 28 the Times published an article in an irre- 
proachable spirit. Its law perhaps was bad, but its inten- 
tions good. It stated that the seizure of the envoys was a 
questionable proceeding ; that it was irregular, the proper course 
being to make prize of the Trent, and bring the question before 
the courts ; but, on the whole, it was not improbable that the 
Americans were legally justified, and, if so, we should yield with 
a good grace. It is not surprising that the Americans took at 
first the same view more strongly, that they assumed that they 
were certainly right ; that their papers wrote a great deal of non- 
sense, retorting much of the abuse which our national organ had 
heaped upon them, and that public meetings conducted by stump 
orators welcomed Wilkes as a spirited assertor of the country's 
honour. 

On the 29th the Times found out that it had made a slip. The 
law officers of the Crown decided that Mason and Slidell must 
be demanded, and on December 2 the Times further announced 
that a proper demand -for their delivery had been sent. From 
this time till the middle of January, 1862, one leader, sometimes 
two, and sometimes three, appeared daily in the Times discoursing 
upon American affairs ; and if any one wishes to practise the art 
of irritating abuse, I recommend him to study these charming 
productions. 

The City article of the 30th had already remarked, with its 
usual delicate appreciation of American institutions, its fear that 
the decision of the matter would be taken out of the hands of the 
Government by the mob. The leading article of the same day 



102 The " Times" on the American War. 



implied that even this view was too favourable. There was, it 
admitted, " a possibility that the act was not expressly directed 
" by the Government." " We fear, however, that the Federal 
" Government had deliberately determined to seize the Southern 
" Commissioners," and, in support of this hypothesis, it gave an 
elaborate discussion of certain rumours as to the movements of 
Federal vessels. This was confirmed (Dec. 3) by the assertion 
that America refuses to show the slightest respect for inter- 
national law. "It is evident," it inferred, "that if England 
" should be found ready to eat dirt, there will be no lack of 
" Americans to cram it down her throat," and indeed, 
without waiting to discover our capacity of swallow, they must 
have been ready to try, for it believed war to have been deter- 
mined upon long ago. The American newspapers had, of 
course, given food for abuse ; but, before hearing of the attitude 
taken by England, there had been a change in their tone of 
" a wholesome kind," and this is the way in which the Times 
moralizes upon it. (Dec. 9.) — We might, it says, be happy if we could 
trust to the " blank terror in some of those broadsheets that have 
" been breathing flames for some years past." " Because we had, 
" half grumbling and half in contempt, allowed them for some 
" years to tread rudely upon our corns and to elbow us dis- 
" courteously," they had thought that we should submit "to have 
" our noses tweaked in solemn form by Mr. Seward." Sheer 
cowardice had, it seems, improved them. Gradually, as the 
chances of peace increased, the Times grew more blustering and 
offensive. The war was gradually brutalizing both sides. The 
South were bad enough (Dec. 10), but still it appears (Dec. 17) 
that they were fighting " to emancipate themselves from the 
" tyranny of a degraded mob, elective judges, and elective 
" governors." " The natural course of financial sequences must 
" bring the civil war to an end." Without the addition of a 
foreign war, "the other difficulties must produce an immediate 



Moral. 



103 



collapse, and the peace which ensues upon utter exhaustion." 
Encouraged by this, the Times gloats over the sight of the 
Americans yielding to our invincible arms. (Dec. 26.) — " It would 
" be amusing, if it were not painful, to see how the whole set 
" of tricky politicians are preparing to meet the anger of the 
" ' Britisher.' " It was indeed possible that, notwithstanding their 
abject terror, a war might be brought about, to escape from the 
war at home. 

The more numerous party would expect to chaw England up. 
A few anxious business men might be against it. The party who 
object to the war, because it will embarrass the conquest of the 
South, are balanced by the large party disgusted with the present 
contest and anxious to get out of it by a war with England. We 
all know, as the mob are the rulers of the United States, 
whether " the few anxious business men " and the sincere fanatics 
are likely to control the braggarts and dishonest politicians. 
The Times argued anxiously and as long as possible that 
war was highly probable. The tone of America had become 
peaceful: as the Times put it (Jan. 2, 1862), "when the lion 
" approaches the douar of the wandering Arab, the dogs of 
" the encampment are silent from fear ; " but, as it con- 
solingly added, " it is not certain that the men of that encamp- 
u ment will give up the sheep for which he is roaring without a 
" fight." It repudiated with indignation the weak proposals of 
Lord Ebury and some weak-minded lovers of peace, who proposed 
an arbitration. It bragged of our capacity to whip the Yankees 
whenever we pleased. The Americans were ignorant of our power. 
(January 3, 1862.) — "At privateering we, as being infinitely 
" stronger, could do more than they." Our privateers " would be 
" as certain in the long run to beat theirs as our Royal Navy 
" would be to beat their ships of war." A war, indeed, would, 
" comparatively speaking, be sport to us, though death to them — 
" their navy is scarcely more formidable than that of Italy or 



X04 



The " Times" on the American War. 



" Spain." And throughout all this reckless abuse or bluster there 
is not one civil word nor one hint that any considerations of 
justice could possibly have any weight with Mr. Lincoln, 
Mr. Seward, or the American people. Mason and Slidell were 
surrendered, and the abuse of the Times was increased (if possible) 
in proportion to its sense of safety. The surrender, it assured us 
as soon as it was reported, was due not to Vattel and Bynkershoek, 
(Jan. 9, 1862) — " but to the promptitude with which we reinforced 
" Admiral Hughes' fleet and poured battalion after battalion into 
" Canada." The quarrel being over (Jan. 10) it observed, "we are 
" rather better friends than before." As, however, it is reported that 
the Northerner hates England twice as much as he loves the Union, 
we had better maintain our forces in Canada. Mason and Slidell 
were on their way to England, and the Times feared that they would 
receive what it calls an " ovation." It accordingly informed them 
(January 11, 1862), that " the general impression in this country is 
" that both sides in the States have acted as ill as could be . . . 
" that it is not for England to decide which of them bears the 
" palm for insolence, outrage, treachery, and folly." The quarrel 
was like one between two noisy brats in the nursery, which 
the mother is called in to quiet, and it draws this beautiful 
moral : — " Let us sincerely hope that our countrymen will not 
" give these fellows anything in the shape of an ovation. . . . 
" We should have done just as much to rescue two of their 
" own negroes. ... So please, British public, let's have 
" none of these things." As a humble member of that collective 
unit, I shrink from the offensive familiarity of this soi-disant 
representative of my country as one shrinks from being patted 
on the back by a British snob in a foreign land. During the 
rest of January the Times absolutely coruscated with a succession 
of jubilant articles calculated to point out to the North their 
extreme folly and our serene wisdom. 

In the presence of a national danger there are two lines of 



Moral 



105 



policy possible. One is to abstain from studied insult, to give 
the American Government all the strength which a calm appeal 
to their sense of justice could confer, and whilst preparing for 
war, to seek by all honourable means for peace. But if policy 
is to be determined by the motive of pleasing your audience, 
and your audience is certain to be in a bad temper, then say all 
the insulting things you can think of. Tell the Americans that a 
deliberate breach of international law was all we expected of 
them ; that we were ready to punish them like yelping curs ; that 
we hoped nothing from their justice, but much from their 
cowardice ; that even if their Government wished to be just, 
which is highly improbable, the mob would not permit it ; fill all 
vacant spaces with well-worn topics of abuse ; rake up all the 
old quarrels you can think of ; and, if you don't promote peace, 
you will certainly sell your paper. I do not know how large a 
dose of this abuse reached America in time to influence the 
decision of the United States Government and people ; but even 
if the Times can escape on the plea that it only used this 
language when it was tolerably safe, I would observe that it was 
not likely to make things pleasant for the next quarrel that might 
occur. 

And this is my moral : — The persistent misapprehensions of 
the Times have, in my opinion, produced a very serious mischief. 
It was not that it took the Southern side. No American would 
have a right to complain if it had preferred the principle 
of State Rights to the abolition of slavery, although it is highly 
probable that many Americans would have complained and 
attributed it to mean jealousy. But my complaint against the 
Times is that its total ignorance of the quarrel, and the presump- 
tion with which it pronounced upon its merits, led to its pouring 
out a ceaseless flood of scurrilous abuse, couched, indeed, in 
decent language, but as essentially insulting as the brutal 
vulgarities of the New York Herald. No American — I will not 

8 



io6 



The " Times" on the American War. 



say with the feelings of a gentleman, for of course there are no 
gentlemen in America — but no American with enough of the 
common feelings of humanity to resent the insult when you spit 
in his face could fail to be wounded, and, so far as he took the 
voice of the Times for the voice of England, to be irritated 
against England. I am not so vain as to think that anything 
which I can do will at all lower the Times in popular esteem. 
An attack upon its character for consistency and political 
morality is pretty much thrown away ; it is like accusing a gipsy 
of not having a clean shirt ; it has long learnt to be independent 
of that luxury. If I had the eloquence of Burke my attacks 
would be of little importance to the Times. Still, I am anxious 
to do what little I can, not to injure the Times , but to explain 
the true value of its criticism in this particular case. I 
may help to prove to some Americans that the Times does not 
express the judgment of thoughtful Englishmen, but only supplies 
the stimulating, but intrinsically insipid fare that most easily titil- 
lates an indolent appetite. Men whose opinions about America are 
mere guesses lying on the surface of their minds, and never subject 
to its serious operations, like this kind of stuff. That is true, but 
that is all that is to be said ; and I see no reason why a sensible 
American should be vexed by such random ignorance. All that I 
can profess to do for English readers is, to give an additional 
proof of the correctness of the common opinion about the Times, 
namely, that, as for consistency, it has none, and its politics are 
altogether uncertain. 

It is probable that the interests of foreign politics may con- 
tinue to increase. Personal observation in America has shown 
me the pernicious effect which the Times may produce upon our 
relations with other countries. The cruel insults to men, who, 
at least, were patriotic to the pitch of enthusiasm, were supposed 
to come from the English nation ; and every concession became 
doubly difficult. If future complications should arise, any 



Moral 



107 



contribution towards a due appreciation of the Times may be 
valuable. 

I will only add that I have been quite unable to give a 
complete picture of the Times, and, especially, to give any 
adequate idea of its abuse. I have gathered a few pearls on 
the shore of the great ocean of misrepresentation. I cannot 
hope that any one will feel their full force who does not 
remember that they are mere specimens, and that the effect of 
steady abuse accumulates like the effect of the drops of water 
falling on to the head of a prisoner in the Inquisition. 



THE END. 



Printed by Jas. Wade, i8,Tavistock-street, Covent-garden. 



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